Belle Dumé at PhysicsWorld writes: ''Physicists in Germany have used fluorescence imaging to identify individual particles in an optical lattice for the first time. The breakthrough could allow researchers to create more advanced simulations of quantum phenomena and it might help in the quest for practical quantum computing. In this new research, Stefan Kuhr and Immanuel Bloch of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, together with colleagues at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, created an optical lattice to contain a type of ultracold gas known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). These systems are formed when identical atoms with integer spin are cooled until all the atoms are in the same quantum state, meaning they behave as if they were a single quantum particle.''