Strange quantum laws have been practicalized by a team of physicists in Barcelona according to a recent science publication online. The research team created liquid droplets which are 100 million times thinner than water, and can hold themselves together under quantum laws.
The research paper published recently by the Journal Science on 14th December, disclosed that the scientists discovered the strange droplet in a microscopic world of a laser lattice at the Spanish Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, or Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO).
A laser lattice which is microscopic is an optical structure deployed to manipulate quantum objects. The liquid droplets were true liquids in nature; meaning that they form droplets in small quantities and maintained their volume regardless of external temperature. This is in difference to gases whose molecules spread to fill up their containers.
The ‘quantum’ liquid however, had much lesser density than any liquid which exist under normal circumstances. Also, through a process known as ‘Quantum Fluctuation’, the liquid also maintained their liquid state.
Generating the Quantum Droplets
A gas of potassium atoms was cooled down close to absolute zero, at minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (-273.15°C), by the researchers. The atoms at that temperature, formed a Bose-Einstein condensate, which is a state of matter where cold atoms clump together and physically start to overlap.
The interactions of Bose-Einstein condensates are dominated by quantum laws, unlike the normal classical interactions which explain the behaviour of some other large bulks of matter.
When two of these condesates were pushed together during the experimentation, they formed droplets which bonded together to fill a defined volume.
Most liquids hold their droplet shapes together through electromagnetic interactions between the molecules, but these new droplets don’t conform to that principle. Instead, these droplets held their own shapes through the process called “quantum fluctuation.”
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle highlight’s quantum fluctuation, which states that particles are probabilistic, meaning that they don’t hold on to one energy level or place is space, but instead they are smeared across several possible energy levels and locations.
The “smeared” energy particles act like they are jumping and hovering across their possible locations and energies, while applying pressure on their neighbours.
When all the pressures from these fluxing particles are added up, you’ll observe that they tend to attract one another, more than they repel each other. It is that attraction that binds them together, forming droplets.
The uniqueness of these droplets is based on their quantum fluctuation, which is the dominant interaction holding them in their liquid state. Some other “quantum fluids” such as liquid ‘helium demonstrate a similar effect, but they are different because much more powerful forces are needed to bind them much more tightly together.
However, the droplets of potassium condensate which was discovered, are not dominated by those other forces, and they have weak-interacting particles, which give them the ability to spread themselves across much wider spaces, while maintaining their droplets shapes.
The authors of the research wrote that comparing these new droplets to similar helium droplets, the new droplets are two orders of magnitude larger, and in eight orders of magnitude much more dilute in nature.
In Summary
This is such a big deal for research experimenters because potassium droplets of quantum nature might turn out to become much better quantum liquids for future experiments than helium currently is.
However, the research paper noted that these droplets did have a limitation though. It was observed that if there were too few atoms involved in the interactions, they end up collapsing and evaporating into the surrounding space.
Further reading: Paper
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