First Bose-Einstein condensate of erbium produced

First Bose-Einstein condensate of erbium produced: “Erbium is comparatively heavy and has a strongly magnetic character. These properties lead to an extreme dipolar behavior of quantum systems,” says Ferlaino.
Together with her research group, she found a surprisingly simple way to deeply cool this complex element by means of laser and evaporative cooling techniques. At temperatures close to absolute zero, a cloud of about 70,000 erbium atoms forms a magnetic Bose-Einstein condensate. In a condensate, the particles lose their individual properties and synchronize their behavior. “Experiments with erbium enable us to gain new insights into the complex interaction processes of strongly correlated systems and, in particular, they offer new starting points to study quantum magnetism with cold atoms,” says Francesca Ferlaino...
Until now a total of 13 elements have been condensated worldwide.