To eliminate any effects of temperature, the researchers cooled the gas to about 100 billionths of one Kelvin, close to absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius). They used magnetic forces to separate the gas into two clouds, labeled “spin up” and “spin down,” then made the clouds collide in a trap formed by laser light. Instead of passing through each other, as gases would normally do, the clouds repelled in dramatic fashion.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The bouncing gas
The bouncing gas: In this study, the researchers set out to model strongly interacting systems, using lithium gas atoms to stand in for electrons. By tuning the lithium atoms’ energy states with a magnetic field, they made the atoms interact with each other as strongly as the laws of nature allow: they scatter every time they encounter another atom.
To eliminate any effects of temperature, the researchers cooled the gas to about 100 billionths of one Kelvin, close to absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius). They used magnetic forces to separate the gas into two clouds, labeled “spin up” and “spin down,” then made the clouds collide in a trap formed by laser light. Instead of passing through each other, as gases would normally do, the clouds repelled in dramatic fashion.
To eliminate any effects of temperature, the researchers cooled the gas to about 100 billionths of one Kelvin, close to absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius). They used magnetic forces to separate the gas into two clouds, labeled “spin up” and “spin down,” then made the clouds collide in a trap formed by laser light. Instead of passing through each other, as gases would normally do, the clouds repelled in dramatic fashion.
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