Cooling and trapping is a set of experimental techniques used to reduce the kinetic energy of particles, typically atoms or ions, and confine them spatially for precision measurements and quantum control. Laser cooling methods, such as Doppler and sub-Doppler cooling, use resonant light to induce momentum exchange that lowers atomic velocities, while magneto-optical traps (MOTs) combine inhomogeneous magnetic fields with polarized light to provide both cooling and restoring forces. Additional mechanisms, including evaporative cooling and optical or electromagnetic trapping potentials, further reduce temperatures toward the quantum degenerate regime, enabling studies of ultracold gases, atomic clocks, quantum simulation, and controlled quantum information processing.
Quantum experiments always have to deal with the same problem, regardless of whether they involve quantum computers, quantum teleportation or new types of quantum sensors: quantum effects break down very easily. They are ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 27, 2024
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128
For the first time, a team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF and the University of New Mexico have succeeded in cooling silica glass by 67 Kelvin through optical ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 21, 2024
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143
Researchers at ETH have managed to trap ions using static electric and magnetic fields and to perform quantum operations on them. In the future, such traps could be used to realize quantum computers with far more quantum ...
Quantum Physics
Mar 13, 2024
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296
Over the past 20 years, many physicists have studied ultra-cold fermionic systems contained in magnetic or optical traps. When an external magnetic field is applied to a two-species fermionic system, the particles can pair ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 12, 2024
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98
The simplest possible molecule H2+ was one of the very first molecules to form in the cosmos. This makes it significant for astrophysics, but also an important object of research for fundamental physics. However, it is difficult ...
Optics & Photonics
Feb 27, 2024
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110
AEgIS is one of several experiments at CERN's Antimatter Factory producing and studying antihydrogen atoms with the goal of testing with high precision whether antimatter and matter fall to Earth in the same way.
General Physics
Feb 22, 2024
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145
While atomic clocks are already the most precise timekeeping devices in the universe, physicists are working hard to improve their accuracy even further. One way is by leveraging spin-squeezed states in clock atoms.
Optics & Photonics
Feb 19, 2024
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225
A new cooling technique that utilizes a single species of trapped ion for both computing and cooling could simplify the use of quantum charge-coupled devices (QCCDs), potentially moving quantum computing closer to practical ...
Quantum Physics
Feb 6, 2024
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193
A team of experimentalists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) and theorists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has succeeded for the first time in populating and stabilizing a new type of molecule, ...
General Physics
Jan 31, 2024
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535
For the first time, scientists have successfully trapped atoms of krypton (Kr), a noble gas, inside a carbon nanotube to form a one-dimensional gas.
Nanophysics
Jan 22, 2024
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513
