Latest Bose–Einstein condensate Stories
University of Innsbruck Below a critical temperature, certain fluids become superfluid and lose internal friction. In addition, fluids in this state conduct heat extremely efficiently, with energy transport occurring in a distinct temperature wave. Because of the similarities to a sound wave, this temperature wave is also called second sound. To explain the nature of superfluids, the famous physicist Lev Landau developed the theory of two-fluid hydrodynamics in Moscow in 1941. He assumed...
Vienna University of Technology Order tends towards disorder. This is also true for quantum states. Measurements at the Vienna University of Technology show that in quantum mechanics this transition can be quite different from what we experience in our daily lives. Ice cubes in a cocktail glass melt until an equilibrium state is reached in which the ice cubes are gone. After that, the geometric shape of the ice cubes is completely lost. The liquid does not contain any memory of their...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Two new studies, both published in Nature this week, outline incredible breakthroughs in the field of quantum mechanics. Australian engineers led an international team of researchers to create the first working quantum bit based on a single atom in silicon, potentially making another important step toward ultra-powerful quantum computing that theoreticians have dreamt of for decades. The team describes how they were able to read...
Excitons form Bose-Einstein condensate Physicists have trapped and cooled exotic particles called excitons so effectively that they condensed and cohered to form a giant matter wave. This feat will allow scientists to better study the physical properties of excitons, which exist only fleetingly yet offer promising applications as diverse as efficient harvesting of solar energy and ultrafast computing. "The realization of the exciton condensate in a trap opens the opportunity to study...
Squeezing what hasn't been squeezed before Most people attempt to reduce the little uncertainties of life by carrying umbrellas on cloudy days, purchasing automobile insurance or hiring inspectors to evaluate homes they might consider purchasing. For scientists, reducing uncertainty is a no less important goal, though in the weird realm of quantum physics, the term has a more specific meaning. For scientists working in quantum physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that...
Physicists at Harvard University have realized a new way to cool synthetic materials by employing a quantum algorithm to remove excess energy. The research, published this week in the journal Nature, is the first application of such an "algorithmic cooling" technique to ultra-cold atomic gases, opening new possibilities from materials science to quantum computation. "Ultracold atoms are the coldest objects in the known universe," explains senior author Markus Greiner, associate professor...
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found a way to manipulate atoms' internal states with lasers that dramatically influences their interactions in specific ways. Such light-tweaked atoms can be used as proxies to study important phenomena that would be difficult or impossible to study in other contexts. Their most recent work, appearing in Science,* demonstrates a new class of interactions thought to be important to the physics of superconductors that...
'Dressing' atoms with laser light allows high angular momentum scattering to be seen for the first time in long-lived atomic Bose-Einstein condensates at ultracold temperatures Scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) have for the first time engineered and detected the presence of high angular momentum collisions between atoms at temperatures close to absolute zero. Previous experiments with ultracold atoms featured essentially head-on collisions. The JQI experiment, by contrast, is...
Quantum physicists pave the way for investigating new states of matter in ultracold atom mixturesScientists of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Innsbruck, Austria, have reached a milestone in the exploration of quantum gas mixtures. In an international first, the research group led by Rudolf Grimm and Florian Schreck has succeeded in producing controlled strong interactions between two fermionic elements - lithium-6 and potassium-40. This model system not...
Completely new source of light for many applicationsPhysicists from the University of Bonn have developed a completely new source of light, a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of photons. Until recently, experts had thought this impossible. This method may potentially be suitable for designing novel light sources resembling lasers that work in the x-ray range. Among other applications, they might allow building more powerful computer chips. The scientists are reporting on their...
