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.
Antimatter might sound like something out of science fiction, but at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator (AD), scientists produce and trap antiprotons every day. The BASE experiment can even contain them for more than a year—an ...
General Physics
Oct 28, 2024
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A team of physicists led by Johannes Zeiher, research group leader in Immanuel Bloch's Quantum Many-Body Systems department and co-founder of the MPQ spin-off planqc, has achieved significant progress in scaling up quantum ...
Optics & Photonics
Oct 9, 2024
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Most atoms are made from positively charged protons, neutral neutrons and negatively charged electrons. Positronium is an exotic atom composed of a single negative electron and a positively charged antimatter positron. It ...
General Physics
Sep 11, 2024
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Researchers in the Neutral Atom Optical Clocks Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), University of Colorado and Pennsylvania State University recently devised a new sub-recoil Sisyphus cooling ...
Many quantum devices, from quantum sensors to quantum computers, use ions or charged atoms trapped with electric and magnetic fields as a hardware platform to process information.
Quantum Physics
Aug 22, 2024
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NASA's Cold Atom Lab, a first-of-its-kind facility aboard the International Space Station, has taken another step toward revolutionizing how quantum science can be used in space. Members of the science team measured subtle ...
General Physics
Aug 13, 2024
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Why does the universe contain matter and (virtually) no antimatter? The BASE international research collaboration at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, headed by Professor Dr. Stefan Ulmer from ...
Quantum Physics
Aug 2, 2024
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Researchers at Purdue University have trapped alkali atoms (cesium) on an integrated photonic circuit, which behaves like a transistor for photons (the smallest energy unit of light) similar to electronic transistors. These ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 29, 2024
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Quantum information systems offer faster, more powerful computing methods than standard computers to help solve many of the world's toughest problems. Yet fulfilling this ultimate promise will require bigger and more interconnected ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 23, 2024
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A team of physicists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has successfully demonstrated the inverse Mpemba effect at the quantum level using single trapped ions. In their study, published in the journal Physical ...
