In Java, both Boolean and AtomicBoolean are used to represent Boolean values, but they have different characteristics and use cases.

Boolean is a wrapper class that represents a Boolean value as an object. It has two possible values: true or false. Boolean objects are immutable, which means that once created, their value cannot be changed.

AtomicBoolean, on the other hand, is a class that provides atomic operations on a Boolean value. Atomic operations are thread-safe, meaning that they can be safely used in a concurrent environment without the risk of race conditions or other synchronization issues. AtomicBoolean provides methods such as get(), set(), compareAndSet(), getAndSet(), etc., which can be used to perform atomic operations on its underlying Boolean value.

The main difference between Boolean and AtomicBoolean is that Boolean is immutable and cannot be changed once created, whereas AtomicBoolean is mutable and can be modified using atomic operations.

AtomicBoolean is typically used in concurrent programming scenarios where multiple threads may access and modify the same Boolean value. In such cases, using AtomicBoolean can help avoid race conditions and other synchronization issues that may arise when multiple threads access and modify the same value concurrently.

On the other hand, Boolean is typically used when you need a Boolean value as an object, for example, when passing it as an argument to a method that expects an object or when storing it in a collection that only accepts objects.

Here is an example of a Counter class where you would typically use AtomicBoolean:

public class Counter {
    private AtomicBoolean isIncrementing = new AtomicBoolean(false);
    private int count = 0;

    public int increment() {
        while (!isIncrementing.compareAndSet(false, true)) {
            // wait until it's safe to increment
        }

        count++;
        isIncrementing.set(false);

        return count;
    }
}

In short, whenever it's more than one thread could change a boolean value at the same time, it's better to use AtomicBoolean for thread-safety.