A cold atom laboratory (CAL) is a facility dedicated to the study of ultra-cold atoms. These atoms are cooled to near absolute zero, typically using laser cooling techniques. In this environment, quantum effects become pronounced, allowing for the study of quantum degeneracy and Bose–Einstein condensation. CALs can be used to simulate various phenomena that occur in nature, such as black holes and neutron stars.
The first cold atom lab was built at MIT in 1993 by Steven Chu and his research group. Since then, CALs have been constructed at many institutions around the world, including JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder; RIKEN in Japan; and the École Normale Supérieure in France.
Research conducted in CALs has led to numerous discoveries, such as the observation of superfluidity in a two-dimensional gas of rubidium atoms, and the creation of artificial gauge fields for neutral atoms. In addition to fundamental studies, CALs have potential applications in metrology, precision measurement, atomic clocks, optoelectronics, quantum information processing ,and tests of general relativity .