Physicists at the University of Chicago have demonstrated formation of a new kind of quantum object — dubbed a ‘domain wall’ — in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Their result can help scientists better understand exotic quantum particles and could suggest avenues for new technologies in the future.
University of Chicago’s Professor Cheng Chin and colleagues study novel quantum systems and the physics that underlie them. Under the right conditions, a Bose-Einstein condensate of cesium-133 atoms segregated into domains, and a ‘wall’ formed at the junction where they met.“It’s kind of like a sand dune in the desert — it’s made up of sand, but the dune acts like an object that behaves differently from individual grains of sand,” University of Chicago Ph.D. student Kai-Xuan Yao.
Once Professor Chin’s team created the recipe to make and closely study the walls, they observed surprising behaviors.“We know if you push atoms to the right, they will move right.”These domain walls are part of a class known as emergent phenomena, which means that they appear to follow new laws of physics as a result of many particles acting together as a collective.
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