We ordinarily think of microwave oven as waves that warmth thing up , usually leftover food , but did you know that they can also chill thing down ? For good example , physicist lately decided to use them to freeze atoms , and attempts have been very successful : They managed to cool down them down to within a millionth of a level ofabsolute zero(–273.15 ° Cor – 459.67 ° degree Fahrenheit ) .
TheUniversity of Sussexteam , led byWinifried Hensinger , had their results published inPhysical Review Letters .
" The exercise of long - wavelength radiation instead of laser engineering to cool ion can tremendously simplify the construction of practical quantum technology devices enable us to build up real devices much faster,“saidProfessor Hensinger .
Cooling down mote can be done with laser , like Hensinger describes , in a procedure known aslaser cooling . It takes vantage of a belongings of atoms called " bandgap " : this is the amount of energy it take to energize an electron sitting in an electron plate up to a higher eggshell . The bandgap value has a comparable wavelength of brightness level that exactly matches the vigour it takes to make the negatron jump up a floor .
But what if you shine a optical maser igniter with less energy than the bandgap onto the atom ? The particle does n’t want to lose this opportunity to excite an negatron , so it utilise a chip of its own heat to push the electron up to the next electron level . When the negatron falls down from this higher level to the lower electron shell , it give up all its extra energy : the energy from the incoming igniter and the vigour the atom give it . Now , the speck has less zip than when it start . This effectively cool down down the atom using only laser light .
What Hensinger has done is to take the melodic theme behind laser cooling system and use microwaves instead . By doing this , the team made the cooling proficiency much simpler . This is n’t the first time that microwaves have been used to cool off down objects alternatively of heating them , but this is the coldest that microwave have ever cooled . This is a step closer to create quantum computing technology . Quantum computing is inherently complicated and fiddly , so any advancement is bang-up tidings .
Quantum physics demands that quantum computing machine be at the coolest temperature possible because it is individual molecules that contain processing data . These molecules have to be absolutely still , which only go on at absolute zero , intend that they have no energy , otherwise all of the data is fall behind . commonly , computing machine run using binary code – ones and zeros . Yes or no . However , a quantum computing machine takes advantage of the undulation - like properties of particles : they can be one and zero at the same time .
Not all computers need this capability , but it could be extremely utile to solve trouble that computers presently ca n’t .
This is why it ’s so significant to seek to make freeze atoms to absolute zero a elementary process . " Besides finding an easy way to make atoms with zero - point Department of Energy , we have also make do to put the particle into a highly counter - intuitive body politic : where it is both moving and not moving at the same time,“saidProfessor Hensinger .
Central persona : Winfried Hensinger ( right ) and Dr. Seb Weidt ( allow ) are freezing individual atoms using microwaves . University of Sussex .
