Table of Contents
What is Bose-Einstein condensate made of?
A Bose-Einstein condensate is a group of atoms cooled to within a hair of absolute zero. When they reach that temperature the atoms are hardly moving relative to each other; they have almost no free energy to do so. At that point, the atoms begin to clump together, and enter the same energy states.
Which atoms exhibit Bose-Einstein’s condensation?
On 5 June 1995, the first gaseous condensate was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at the University of Colorado at Boulder NIST–JILA lab, in a gas of rubidium atoms cooled to 170 nanokelvins (nK). Shortly thereafter, Wolfgang Ketterle at MIT produced a Bose–Einstein Condensate in a gas of sodium atoms.
Can hydrogen exhibit Bose-Einstein condensation?
Concluding a quest that lasted 20 years, a team of researchers has teased a sample of hydrogen gas into forming a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a form of matter in which all of the atoms occupy the same quantum state. This process left the remaining atoms with temperatures as low as 100 µK.
What can a Bose Einstein condensate be used for?
One application for BEC is for the building of so-called atom lasers, which could have applications ranging from atomic-scale lithography to measurement and detection of gravitational fields. It has alternatively been described as “as a superatom, where all the atoms share the same quantum mechanical state.”
What can Bose-Einstein condensates do?
Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a state of matter in which separate atoms or subatomic particles, cooled to near absolute zero (0 K, − 273.15 °C, or − 459.67 °F; K = kelvin), coalesce into a single quantum mechanical entity—that is, one that can be described by a wave function—on a near-macroscopic scale.
What are some examples of Bose Einstein condensate?
Two examples of materials containing Bose-Einstein condensates are superconductors and superfluids. Superconductors conduct electricity with virtually zero electrical resistance: Once a current is started, it flows indefinitely. The liquid in a superfluid also flows forever.
Is it possible to make a Bose-Einstein condensate out of atoms?
The tricky part of making a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) out of atoms is getting a high enough concentration and low enough temperature, without forming a solid. This really limits the types of particles that can form BECs, and as far as I know no one has overcome these problems with deuterium and tritium, though it may be possible for tritium.
What is the difference between a deuteron and a tritium?
The deuteron is a boson, but deuterium is a fermion (it has one electron and two nucleons, each of them a fermion), and thus it is not subject to Bose-Einstein condensation. Tritium is a boson, like protium (the name for the lightest isotope of hydrogen), and prospects for its condensation have been studied by Blume et al.
Is a deuteron a boson or boson?
The deuteron is a boson, but deuterium is a fermion (it has one electron and two nucleons, each of them a fermion), and thus it is not subject to Bose-Einstein condensation.
What is the difference between the Bose-Einstein and Jin-DeMarco experiments?
While the Bose-Einstein experiments used one class of quantum particles known as bosons, Jin and DeMarco cooled atoms that are fermions, the other class of quantum particles found in nature. This was important to physicists because the basic building blocks of matter—electrons, protons and neutrons — are all fermions.