Specialists have recently developed a new cooling technique which may help the development of quantum computers. The basic rules of physics state that cooling objects to an absolute zero are impossible because all the thermal energy of the object is completely retrieved. Thus, the atoms reach a deadlock.
- Researchers have debunked the laws of physics.
- A group of scientists have succeeded in cooling down an object to the lowest temperature ever used.
- The object reached to be 10,000 colder than the vacuum of space.
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology managed to prove the opposite, debunking laws of physics. They managed almost to fulfill this goal. Researchers cooled an item to a lower temperature than scientists ever thought to be possible. The new study was published on January 11 in the Nature magazine. Researchers have presented how they managed to use a laser to cool down a microscopic drum to the lowest temperature ever used before.
The new cooling technique used by these experts challenged the quantum limit for cooling mechanical objects. Specialists cooled down the mechanical drum to about 360 microKelvin. This value represents a temperature of 10,000 colder than the vacuum of space. The innovative process is known to have used squeezed light.
The best technique used so far by scientists to remove an object’s thermal energy is called sideband cooling. The procedure implies the use of lasers to slow down an object’s atoms. The frequency and the angle of this ray of light facilitate photons to engulf the energy from the molecules with which they interact.
Nevertheless, there existed quantum limits which determined how cold an object could become by using this technique. The behavior of light helped scientists debunk all logic. Usually, light travels in continuous streams, but this time it was altered to move in several packets called quanta. Each pack of light enables a kick when it arrives at the surface of the object.
This means that even if energies are removed, some heat is still added during the development of this process. The experiment under discussion could be compared to the one in which one may try to keep a leaf in the air by using a sputtering tube.
Every time the stream weakens, the leaf drifts. To erase the kicks of light packets, researchers decided to “squeeze” light by implementing the use of a superconducting circuit. This helped them develop a light beam with quanta which followed one after the other, rendering a particular pattern.
Image courtesy of: flickr
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