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Science

New State of Matter Not So New?

Adrian Cho

Published Mar 1, 2002• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

AAAS MEETINGBOSTON-- At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of Science ), held here 14 to 19 February, it was revealed that the bizarre phenomenon known as Bose-Einstein condensation may have been observed many years before the discovery that won last year's Nobel Prize in physics. Other presentations discussed the explosion in our ancestors' use of [ornamental beads][1] about 40,000 years ago and a [viral threat to newborns][2]. More stories from the meeting can be found in last week's issue (see [Human Gene Count on the Rise][3] and [A Whale of a Chain Reaction][4] ) and at [www.sciencenow.org][5] and [sageke.sciencemag.org][6]. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/295/5560/1630b [2]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/295/5560/1631a [3]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/295/5559/1457a [4]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/295/5559/1457b [5]: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org [6]: http://sageke.sciencemag.org

DOI
10.1126/science.295.5560.1630a

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AAAS MEETINGBOSTON-- At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of Science ), held here 14 to 19 February, it was revealed that the bizarre phenomenon known as Bose-Einstein condensation may have been observed many years before the discovery that won last year's Nobel Prize in physics. Other presentations discussed the explosion in our ancestors' use of ornamental beads about 40,000 years ago and a viral threat to newborns. More stories from the meeting can be found in last week's issue (see Human Gene Count on the Rise and A Whale of a Chain Reaction ) and at www.sciencenow.org and sageke.sciencemag.org.
A Bose-Einstein condensate in a dilute gas is a collective state of atoms that acts like a quantum mechanical wave with a phase. In his Perspective, [Javanainen][1] highlights the demonstration by [ Saba et al .][2] that the phase difference between two condensates can be measured without destroying the condensates. The experiments open up new ways to manipulate condensates, which are macroscopic objects, as if they were quantum mechanical entities. Measurement devices based on matter-wave interferometry are a potential application. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/5717/1883 [2]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/307/5717/1945
The phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), first predicted by Einstein 70 years ago, has finally been observed in the laboratory. In this elusive state of matter the concept of individual particles ceases to have meaning: the atoms condense into the same quantum state and act as a single entity that displays quantum mechanical behaviour on a macroscopic scale. The condensate was observed when Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and colleagues at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado, cooled a dilute gas of rubidium atoms, confined in a magnetic trap, to a temperature of just a few nanoKelvin (M H Anderson et al. 1995 Science 269 198).
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), the first of which was shown experimentally 22 years ago, isn’t your garden variety state of matter. It formed at a fraction above absolute zero and only in atoms that act like bosons, one of two types of fundamental particles. Bosons don’t follow the Pauli exclusion principle, which prohibits two particles from existing in the same quantum state. When bosonic atoms are cooled to form a condensate, they can lose their individuality. They behave like one big collective superatom, analogous to how photons become indistinguishable in a laser beam. But it’s even weirder than that. This velocity-distribution data for a gas of rubidium atoms confirmed the discovery of the Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. In these three snapshots in time, atoms—cooled to near absolute zero—condensed from less dense areas on the left (red, yellow, and green) to very dense areas at the center and the right (blue and white). Image courtesy of NIST/JILA/CU-Boulder. “In a very good analogy, one can view a BEC as a bell, which begins to ring spontaneously when it is cooled below a certain temperature,” writes physicist Nick Proukakis at the Joint Quantum Centre Durham–Newcastle in the United Kingdom, in Universal Themes of Bose–Einstein Condensation , a forthcoming collection of research essays on progress in BECs (1). That behavior provides physicists with an extraordinary opportunity: to study bizarre quantum effects on a large scale, instead of having to probe individual particles. For the last two decades, physicists have treated BECs something like Play-Doh. They poke it, smash it, tickle it with lasers, and trap it in magnetic fields. They mix condensates together to see what happens, and use it to slow down light (2). They have observed strange behaviors that would have been impossible to predict even two decades ago: solids that flow …
Ever since the discovery of Bose-Einstein condensation in an atomic Bose gas in 1995, physicists have been searching for its analog, the fermion superfluid in atomic Fermi gases. Fermion superfluids are expected to exhibit quantum phenomena on the macroscopic scale, just as Bose-Einstein condensates do. Making use of a process called Feshbach resonance, which allows the interaction between atoms to be increased strongly, several groups have recently reported evidence on fermion superfluids. In his Perspective, [Ho][1] highlights the report by [ Chin et al .][2], who have directly observed a pairing gap, a key property of a fermion superfluid. Their interpretation is strongly supported by the theoretical calculation of [ Kinnunen et al .][3] Ho argues that the evidence accumulated so far provides an overwhelming case for the realization of fermion superfluids. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/305/5687/1114 [2]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/305/5687/1128 [3]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/305/5687/1131