Fermions go degenerate
Brian DeMarco and Deborah Jin used a pair of magneto-optical traps to confine about 700000 atoms of potassium-40 at temperatures below 300 nanokelvin. This is about half of the degeneracy temperature ...
Quantum dots breakthrough
Only two other methods have previously been used to manufacture quantum dots: electron beam lithography and epitaxy. Lithography is a top down approach in which the beam defines the dot pattern, where...
Read article: A double-slit experiment in a single molecule
A double-slit experiment in a single molecule
Photons from the laser can excite electrons in the water molecules into a so-called anti-bonding state. Molecules in this state can adopt one of two distorted shapes, both of which can dissociate into...
Quantum dots become more ‘atom-like’
Banin and co-workers used quantum dots made of indium arsenide, covered with a nonconducting barrier of hexane dithiol molecules and linked to a conducting gold film. The radius of the nearly spherica...
The brain is ‘classical’
Nearly all the quantum models of the brain depend on how long the brain can keep quantum coherence. Penrose argues for example, that microtubles – small hollow cylinders that help cells keep the...
First for single-photon measurements
Photons are traditionally detected by converting their energy into an electric signal, which destroys the photon in the process. An additional problem in quantum measurements is that if one variable &...
Gravity-wave detectors target quantum gravity
Both the French-Italian gravity-wave interferometer, called VIRGO, and the LIGO interferometers in the US are designed to detect very weak gravity waves by using lasers to monitor test masses placed a...
Read article: Matter makes waves
Matter makes waves
Phillips and his colleagues produced a focused directional output from the Bose-Einstein condensate by firing two laser beams into the condensate. One beam adds energy to the atoms, while the second s...
Quantum wells go metallic
Tai Chang Chiang and co-workers at Urbana confined electrons in thin films of silver ranging from 1 monolayer to around 100 monolayers thick. Just as photons resonate back and forth in an optical Fabr...
Still uncertain about Heisenberg
“Heisenberg is an intelligent man, but a typical German (that is to say a Tacitus).” So wrote Albert Einstein to his Swiss confidant Carl Seelig, in January 1953. Although the quotation do...
