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An image of caesium molecules in a Bose-Einstein condensate
Chin Lab
For the first time, researchers have created a frozen cloud of molecules that share the same quantum state, meaning it behaves as if it were a single molecule. The arrangement provides a blank slate for experiments that could yield new materials, such as room-temperature superconductors.
Cheng Chin at the University of Chicago and his colleagues formed a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) from thousands of caesium molecules, using lasers to remove their energy and cool them to near absolute zero.
BECs are often called the fifth state of matter, after solids, liquids, gases and plasmas, and their particles share the same quantum properties as each other. Chin says this is the ideal initial condition for any experiment, as it removes many variables. “They all work together, they all work in the same way. What they are going to do next, they’ll be doing that together. Essentially, it’s a kind of giant molecule,” he says.
Scientists have been creating BECs with atoms since the 1990s, but cooling molecules to this extreme quantum state has proved more difficult. “Eventually you run out of ideas how to get colder,” says Chin.
Instead, the team took a different approach, starting with a single layer of atoms in a BEC and using a magnetic field to induce pairs of atoms to form molecules while still in the BEC state.[…]
Read more: Frozen cloud of molecules acts as a single quantum object | New Scientist
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