Physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in collaboration with the University of Maryland have proposed a method to produce a material that is a "supersolid", a fascinating state of matter that behaves simultaneously as both a solid and a frictionless superfluid.
Physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in collaboration with the University of Maryland have proposed a method for turning extremely cold "boson" atoms - the components of the Bose-Einstein condensate - into a material that is "solid- Super", a fascinating state of matter that behaves simultaneously as both a solid and a frictionless superfluid.
While scientists have found evidence for the existence of supersolids in complex liquid mixtures of helium, it will be easier to understand the existence of such a supersolid if it is formed from weak interactions of gas atoms and to receive from it initial clues for the preparation of completely new materials - "quantum materials" that can To accelerate the physicists' understanding of the behavior of various substances in extreme situations.
A supersolid, whose existence was theorized as far back as 1970, presents the necessary characteristics of a solid in which the atoms are organized in an orderly and periodic pattern as in a crystalline lattice, and of a superfluid, in which the particles move without friction and without losing any energy in this movement. A supersolid, which only exists at extremely low temperatures, behaves very differently from other objects that exist in everyday life.
"If you add more clothes to a washing machine, you increase the mass on its ends, and the machine has to exert more force to reverse the direction of its rotation," explains the study's lead author Ludwig Mathey. "However, in a washing machine composed of a supersolid, some of the clothes, mysteriously, will float in the air and remain stationary while the machine is spinning, thus making it easier for it to change its direction of rotation. Moreover, these floating clothes, which are frictionless, will organize themselves in the air in an orderly and cyclical manner, similar to the organization of atoms in a crystal."
In 2004, researchers Moses Chan and Eun-Seong Kim of the University of Pennsylvania published the groundbreaking findings of a low-temperature helium experiment and gathered evidence for the existence of a supersolid state. However, the interpretation of their findings had significant uncertainty due to the complex nature of the particular system they were working with to perform their experiments.
Now, a team of three physicists has discovered a method for a more comprehensible preparation of a supersolid, through the use of two types of extremely cold atoms bounded by an optical lattice, a kind of "optical mesh" that captures and places the various atoms at fixed and periodic points in space.
In an article in the journal Physical Review A, the research team describes how it discovered the exact conditions under which a "cloud" of extremely cold atoms of two types (such as rubidium and sodium, or two closely related forms of rubidium) can concentrate independently into a state where a crystalline structure of the various atoms is obtained , that is - a chain in which the two different types of atoms appear alternately in a cyclical manner, while the entire "cloud" preserves the frictionless characteristics of a superfluid consisting of a Bose-Einstein condenser (BEC).
It is difficult to imagine in our mind's eye, in everyday terms, even this situation - the presented images describe the artistic conception of it - but the team identified distinct and clear experimental signatures (mainly photographs of the cloud), which could confirm the simultaneous existence of the two indispensible features these fit.
A supersolid is an example of another direction of research in extremely cold atomic physics - the design and preparation of "quantum" materials with basic properties that were not previously seen in existing materials.
11 תגובות
Eyal:
Ron didn't even try to understand it.
He wrote the things to tease because that's the only thing he knows how to do.
Ron,
Why are you embarrassed? Your comparison mentions things related to the field of quantum - for example Schrödinger's cat matter.
All in all, it is a matter of mixing properties that on a daily basis we perceive as unmixable. According to what I understand, as long as the above material is at rest, it can be defined as a solid since the atoms in it are fixed in place (and even in a periodic order, which is characteristic of a crystal=>solid) . As soon as an object composed of this material receives an acceleration (linear or angular), it behaves like a superfluid, that is, a fluid whose atoms that make it up slide over each other without loss of energy - without friction (in a normal liquid the atoms slide over each other with friction and thus essentially exchange places all the time ).
At least that's how I understand it.
Bolognese:
In relation to your puzzlement - you are right, but the article is also right.
You can see the connection if you look at the following link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson
And also look for the Bose-Einstein string
I thought "bosons" was a type of quantum state (related to the spin of a particle) or am I getting confused and a boson is also a type of particle?
Besides, at what temp are the conditions met?
To the birch - I'm not sure that there won't be friction on the shell of the supersolid, according to the article it talks about what happens inside the solid. Maybe the friction in the casing will be really imperceptible...
Do you get something in the style of a superconductor only that is not related to electricity?
Or like the title is just weird
Birch,
Indeed so, on the assumption that they will be able to produce in sufficient quantity and will have usable mechanical properties (besides zero friction).
Wait, so if we put an object (solid) on a super-solid surface with a really, really, really small slope, it will slide because there is no friction? Like on water (or another liquid) only stronger so that the object doesn't drown?
If Einstein was here, he would surely have called this article: a sneaky article,,
And as for the scorn accompanying his name, he was smiling.
It is likely that he would have remained open minded if only to train his mind to think in the unimaginable quantum wonder of achievement, which condenses and liquefies before his eyes.
Was or wasn't, was or wasn't. ;)
First of all, thank you - these articles open us up to topics that we would never naturally have come across.
Unsurprisingly, I also didn't really understand anything except concepts. solid + on.
From the article you can get a misleading feeling as if there is no friction inside a gas cloud.
I'm glad that there are others who understand and deal with such things and I'm sorry that my horizons are not wide enough to deal with such an article.
By all means, good luck.
Greetings friends,
Ami Bachar
There are special places for people who think that something can be both liquid and solid at the same time. It's just as ridiculous as saying that something can exist and not exist at the same time.
Not pleasant but I didn't understand a word
I hardly understand all the liquid on this one…
In short, what did we get out of this thing?