Long ago, the Greek mathematician Archimedes traveled to Egypt and discovered an invention that will be used for generations. The Archimedes screw consists of a circular pipe inclined at an angle that removes water traps and draws water when rotated.
Today researchers, led by Benjamin Lev, a Stanford University physicist, developed a quantum Archimedes screw that hauls fragile collections of gaseous atoms to higher stable energy states.
"My expectations for our system was that the stability of the gas would only shift a little. I did not expect that I would see complete stabilization of it," explains Lev.
In a study published on January 14 in American Associate for the Advancement of Science, researchers focused on the relationship between long-lived excited states of social quantum systems that both retain relations while evading thermalization---the state of thermal equilibrium.
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