For the first time, researchers at the California Institute of Technology? (Caltech), in collaboration with a team from the University of Vienna, have managed to cool a miniature mechanical object to its lowest possible energy state using laser light. The achievement paves the way for the development of exquisitely sensitive detectors as well as for quantum experiments that scientists have long dreamed of conducting.
"We've taken a solid mechanical system -- one made up of billions of atoms -- and used optical light to put it into a state in which it behaves according to the laws of quantum mechanics. In the past, this has only been achieved with trapped single atoms or ions," says Oskar Painter, professor of applied physics and executive officer for applied physics and materials science at Caltech and the principal investigator on a paper describing the work that appears in the October 6 issue of the journal Nature.
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