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Packing rubidium into quantum degeneracy When atomic gases, such as those of alkali elements, are cooled to very low temperatures, they can reach a state of quantum degeneracy, where their quantum nature comes to the fore. In this process, the very last step is evaporative cooling, in which the hottest atoms are coaxed into leaving the gas. Hu et al. devised a protocol that evades the evaporative cooling step, is faster, and suffers less atom loss. The method rests on iteratively manipulating the laser beams of an optical lattice in which a gas of 87 Rb atoms is held so that the gas becomes progressively denser. The method should be widely applicable to other atomic species. Science , this issue p. 1078
Hu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.