A cloud of ultracold atoms helps study the universe. Research was born from the collaboration between the National Institute of Optics of the National Research Council, the Department of Physics of the University of Trento and the British University of Newcastle.
In the laboratories of the Bose Einstein Pitaevskii Center for Condensate in Trento, researchers prepared a cloud of sodium atoms in an initial state, simulating a false vacuum state. The next step was to verify whether the behavior observed in the atoms was in line with that described by the theories.