In Star Trek, spaceships are attracted to the mothership by a powerful beam of light, usually green or blue. The energy needed to propel fictional spaceships using electromagnetic fields is of course enormous, but is it possible to apply the idea to individual particles? Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia have shown that it is
Instead of pumping spaceships into the mothership, a focused beam can pull atoms into a microscopic hole in an optical fiber. The innovative means may in the future open up extensive research in the field of optics and quantum encryption.
In an article published in the journal Physical Review Applied The researchers claimed that this is the first time they have succeeded in building a waveguide effective enough to capture and drag objects. The doctoral student Ashby Hilton who developed the technology adds: "Although waveguides in films are composed of green or blue light, in our case the conductor is made of infrared light that is not visible to the human eye. The beam captures the atoms floating in the container and empties it (almost completely) into a state just like the vacuum in space. Every atom that is in the vicinity of the beam is captured and attracted to the fiber, there is no way to get out of it. Once the atom is trapped in the optical fiber, it can remain there for a relatively long period of time."
Infrared light
The choice of infrared light is not accidental. Such light is able to change the energy state of the atoms and move them along a path parallel to the beam. Lead researcher Dr. Philip Light explains: "The part that excites me about the experiment is that technology can be used to capture atoms and conduct experiments on them. Right now we intend to use those trapped atoms as memory for quantum computers. We hope that our experiment will yield important applications in information security." These days the researchers are moving to the next phase of the experiment where they will use a conical light beam with a dark center (ie a hollow cone of light). In the experiment, they hope that the trapped atoms will concentrate inside the cone, i.e. in the dark area. According to Dr. Light "this is a powerful idea - with its help we can control the atoms easily and at the same time protect them from external disturbances".
For a video that demonstrates the system and the experiment
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