By gently prodding a swirling cloud of supercooled lithium atoms with a pair of lasers, and observing the atoms' response, researchers at Swinburne have developed a new way to probe the properties of quantum materials.
Quantum materials—a family that includes superfluids, superconductors, exotic magnets, ultracold atoms and recently-discovered 'topological insulators'—display on a large scale some of the remarkable quantum effects usually associated with microscopic and subatomic particles.
But, while quantum mechanics explains the behaviour of microscopic particles, applying quantum theory to larger systems is far more challenging.
"While the potential of quantum materials, such as superconductors, is undeniable, we need to fully grasp the underlying quantum physics at play in these systems to establish their true capabilities," says Chris Vale, an Associate Professor at the Centre for Quantum and Optical Science, who led the research. "That's a big part of the motivation for what we do."
Associate Professor Vale and his colleagues, including Sascha Hoinka and Paul Dyke, also at Swinburne, developed a new way to explore the behaviour of this family of materials. They detected when a 'Fermi gas' of lithium atoms, a simple quantum material, entered a quantum 'superfluid' state.
New system checks theories against experiment
Their system allows theories of superconductivity and related quantum effects to be precisely checked against experiment, to see whether the theories are accurate and how they could be refined.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-supercool-breakthrough-quantum-benchmark.html#jCp
By gently prodding a swirling cloud of supercooled lithium atoms with a pair of lasers, and observing the atoms' response, researchers at Swinburne have developed a new way to probe the properties of quantum materials.
Quantum materials—a family that includes superfluids, superconductors, exotic magnets, ultracold atoms and recently-discovered 'topological insulators'—display on a large scale some of the remarkable quantum effects usually associated with microscopic and subatomic particles.
But, while quantum mechanics explains thebehaviour of microscopic particles, applying quantum theory to larger systems is far more challenging.
"While the potential of quantum materials, such as superconductors, is undeniable, we need to fully grasp the underlying quantum physics at play in these systems to establish their true capabilities," says Chris Vale, an Associate Professor at the Centre for Quantum and Optical Science, who led the research. "That's a big part of the motivation for what we do."
Associate Professor Vale and his colleagues, including Sascha Hoinka and Paul Dyke, also at Swinburne, developed a new way to explore thebehaviour of this family of materials. They detected when a 'Fermi gas' of lithium atoms, a simple quantum material, entered a quantum 'superfluid' state.
Their system allows theories of superconductivity and related quantum effects to be precisely checked against experiment, to see whether the theories are accurate and how they could be refined.