Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
A team of MIT-led scientists has successfully superchilled molecules to record cold conditions, reaching temperatures colder than the period following the Big Bang and just slightly higher than absolute zero, according to research published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
The superchilled atoms created through their efforts are the coldest molecules ever created, and it could shed new light on the unorthodox physics believed to take place at these astonishingly cold conditions, LiveScience reported on Friday. While molecules travel at superfast speeds at normal temperatures, physicists believe that they stop acting individually when superchilled.
During their research, MIT physicist Martin Zwierlein and his colleagues cooled a gas comprised of sodium potassium using lasers in order to dissipate the energy of the individual molecules. They chilled the gas molecules to temperatures as cold as 500 nanokelvins, or just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and even colder than outer space.
Zwierlein’s team discovered that the molecules tended to be stable and not interact with any of the molecules around them. Furthermore, they reportedly established that the molecules showed strong dipole movements, which helps determine if molecules attract or repel one another.
Creating a supercooled sodium-potassium molecule
Using evaporation, lasers, and magnetic fields, they were able to take sodium and potassium, two elements which typically repel each other, and combine them to form unusual sodium-potassium molecules, LiveScience said. Next, the researchers used another set of lasers to cool one of these molecules, resulting in an extremely low-energy state and an exceptionally cold molecule.
The molecule they created only lasted 2 1/2 seconds before it broke up, and while that is not as long as regular chemicals, that is a lengthy amount of time in these conditions. Furthermore, it brings researchers one step closer to cooling molecules even further, in the hopes that they will be able to observe some of the quantum mechanical effects predicted by various theories.
“We have created an ultracold gas of chemically stable molecules,” Zwierlein told redOrbit via email. “These molecules can possibly serve in the future as robust quanten-bits (qubits) in a quantum computer, where ‘0’ and ‘1’ are robustly encoded in the rotation of the molecules.”
“Also, at ultralow temperatures, molecular gases are predicted to form new states of matter with exotic properties, thanks to their strong interactions, not unlike the interaction between bar magnets,” he added. “For example, they might form crystals that support frictionless flow. We are close to the temperature regime where such new states should emerge.”
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