Atom 'noise' may help design quantum computers

To make images of atom "noise," NIST physicists placed a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice made of intersecting laser beams, then turned the lattice off and imaged the expanding cloud of atoms. In the images on the left, lighter areas are the highest concentrations of atoms; darker areas are the lowest concentrations of atoms, dappled with noise. On the right are the processed noise images, revealing that the atoms are spaced evenly in the lattice. Credit: NIST