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The fifth state of matter—the Ultracold Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC)—has been an invaluable asset in unlocking the secrets of quantum physics.
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Now scientists at Columbia University have created a molecular sodium cesium because Dipolar, which opens the door to dozens of exotic matter applications.
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To achieve this breakthrough, the research team used two microwave fields to create the BEC, which lasts for two seconds (quite a long time in Quantum Physics research).
In the mid-1920s, two absolute giants in the world of physics, Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein, theorized the existence of a strange quantum state of matter that would eventually be named in their honor: the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) . The 20th century luminaries thought that if particles were cooled to ultracold temperatures—more fractions of degrees away from absolute zero (-459.67°F)—and held at low densities, they would form an indistinguishable whole.
Fast forward some 70 years later, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder Einstein and Bose proved correctly. Since then, BECS have been an essential tool for exploring the quantum properties of atoms, and a series of advances – whether getting particles even cooler or getting them to form diatom molecules – have made them increasingly useful in the search for the underlying physics who rules the universe.
Now, physicists from Columbia University—in collaboration with Radboud University in the Netherlands—took the next step of this century-long BE journey by creating a sodium cesium condensate that is only five nanoKelvin above absolute zero. While that’s an impressively cold temperature, the key part of this impressive piece of experimental physics is that the resulting BEC is dipolar, meaning it has both a positive and a negative charge. The team used a previously peer-reviewed technique that uses microwaves to exceed “the BEC threshold,” according to a press statement. The results of this research have been published this week in the news Nature.
“By controlling these dipolar interactions, we hope to create new quantum states and phases of matter,” Columbia Postdoc Ian Stevenson, a co-author of the study, said in a press statement.
Microwaves are usually associated with heating things, but study collaborator Tijs Karman from Radboud University suggested that microwaves can act as shields and essentially protect molecules from loss collisions, while removing hot molecules from a sample, which has an overall cooling effect. The team tried the microwave technique in 2023, but this new study added a second microwave field that proved more effective at creating the desired BEC.
“We have a really good idea of the interactions in this system, which is also crucial for the next steps, such as exploring the physics of dipolar many bodies,” said Karman, who was also a co-author of the study, in a press statement. “We devised schemes to control interactions, tested them in theory and implemented them in the experiment. It was truly an amazing experience to see these microwave shielding ideas realized in the laboratory.”
The creation of this dipolar BEC opens the door to creating many other forms of exotic matter, such as “exotic dipolar droplets, self-organized crystal phases, and dipolar spin liquids in optical lattices,” according to the paper. But those are just a few of the dozens of possible applications that this new BEC could help realize. Because this experiment allows precise control over quantum interactions—with an Ultracold scientist at UC-Boulder—the effects on quantum chemistry could also be quite profound.
The universe’s little-known fifth state of matter continues to surprise us more than a century after its surprising introduction to the known world of physics.
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