In an experiment conducted at the Microkelvin Laboratory at the University of Florida, an international research team has overturned an accepted thumb rule in quantum theory to predict the conditions required for the occurrence of transition between two quantum states.
The study findings have appeared in the Nature journal. Quantum properties begin to appear at near-absolute temperatures (-459.67 °F). The Microkelvin lab allows researchers to conduct studies at these temperatures.
Researchers are interested to gain more insights into one of the basic quantum mechanics states called a Bose-Einstein Condensate, which is a delegate, ephemeral phase of matter. At this state, individual particles that create a material start to behave as one coherent unit.
The basic ideas for this study were developed by Rong Yu from Rice University in Houston and Tommaso Roscilde at the University of Lyon, France. They requested Armando Paduan-Filho from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil to create the crystalline sample utilized in the study.
Vivien Zapf, a staff scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Los Alamos, informed that readings taken in the experiment analyzed a significant prediction about a specific behavior in a Bose-Einstein Condensate.
In the study, the atomic spin of bosons, which are subatomic particles in the crystal, was monitored to observe the point at which the transformation to Bose-Einstein Condensate state was attained. The sample then further cooled down to observe the point at which decaying of the condensate properties occurred. The researchers monitored the expected phenomenon by cooling down the sample to 1 mK. They doped the crystal with impurities to get the real world conditions.
According to the researchers, albeit other labs can provide the required extreme temperature, only the Microkelvin Laboratory is able to maintain the temperature long enough to get the measurements required for the experiment. Liang Yin, one of the researchers, informed that the researchers spent six months to collect the readings.
Neil Sullivan, one of the researchers, stated that superconductivity of a superconducting wire is attributed to this Bose-Einstein Condensation concept. Hence, it is essential to better understand the concept to develop innovations such as quantum computing and magnetic levitation for trains.
Source: http://www.ufl.edu