The effects of quantum interactions between “frozen” atoms have been observed and imaged for the first time — and they are impressive. Scientists reduced the proper motion of particles in a fluid until only the interactions between them were at work, which resulted in a quantum “tornado”.
Observing quantum interactions
In the quantum world, sub-atomic particles do not behave as in classical mechanics, where we can determine the position and speed of any object. There, the particles do not have a defined position, but “clouds of possibilities”. Still, they interact following their own quantum rules, which scientists want to observe more “closely”.
To see how atoms interact with each other in the quantum world, the team of physicists trapped and spun a cloud of about 1 million sodium atoms with lasers and electromagnets. In addition, they reduced the temperature to almost absolute zero — which, in practice, means reducing the movement of particles.
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Without the inherent motion of particles, the interaction between them stands out, as it does in the quantum world. This means that the experiment showed classical physics giving way to quantum behavior. This was possible because the team made atoms behave like electrons in a magnetic field.
This approach is very useful because it makes quantum behavior and interactions easier to observe, as current technology makes it possible to manipulate, map and create three-dimensional images of the atoms of matter more easily than electrons. “We can visualize what the individual atoms are doing and see if they obey the same quantum physics,” the study authors said.
In previous research, it was revealed that the procedure would result in a Bose-Einstein condensate, where the gas begins to behave as a single entity with shared properties, taking on a rod, or needle, shape. In the new study, however, the team went further.
Led by MIT physicist Biswaroop Mukherjee, the scientists were able to capture a series of absorption images that reveal a drastic change in rod structure after atoms are governed by quantum mechanics. The cloud of atoms evolved from needle-shaped condensate (left of image), passing through snake-shaped instability (center) and forming microtornadoes (right).
There are even small dark spots between neighboring crystals (see the ‘x’ marks below) where counterflow vortices occur – just as we see in complex weather systems (think neighboring storms on Jupiter).
The fluid was controlled so that nothing else was exerting a force on the atoms except the rotation and interactions of the particles themselves. The resulting behavior had properties similar to those of electrons in the form of Wigner crystals.
If, on the one hand, atoms of crystalline solids are generally arranged in a stationary and repetitive lattice structure, the structures observed in the experiment simulate these properties, although they would still fluctuate. They remain within a defined pattern, like a liquid that behaves like a solid.
According to MIT physicist Martin Zwierlein, the evolution we see in the image “connects with the idea of how a butterfly in China can create a storm [nos EUA], due to instabilities that generate turbulence. Even in classical physics, this gives rise to intriguing pattern formation, like clouds enveloping the Earth in beautiful spiraling motions. And now we can study that in the quantum world.”
The research was published in the journal Nature.
