the challenge
In 1924, Albert Einstein predicted something: based on the quantum formulations of Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, there was a state of matter where separate atoms or subatomic particles, when cooled to near absolute zero, become a single quantum mechanical entity.
But proving the theory was impossible in 1924 — and for decades afterward. The means to get atoms to absolute zero, which is −273.15 °C, or −459.67 °F, didn’t exist.
The SOlution
Hertz Fellow and Nobel laureate Carl Wieman came up with a solution through lasers, which have output and frequency that he could very precisely control. While a Hertz Fellow, he used that precision to measure electron energy states in atoms, which provided data that continued development of quantum electrodynamics.
After graduating from his PhD program, he kept experimenting with lasers, almost as a side project. He wound up using $100 diode lasers to control atoms’ movements, cooling them to less than a thousandth of a degree above absolute zero.
Wieman and then-collaborator Eric Cornell also showed that the use of lasers and magnets could cool rubidium atoms to about one six-millionth of a degree above absolute zero, which condensed them into a new state of matter called Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC).
The condensate vanished after a few seconds, but it proved that the seven-decades-old theory was right.
The Impact
In 2011, Wieman, Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics “for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates.”
In addition to having major ramifications in the study of quantum physics, BECs have been used to slow down, stop and store a light pulse in a BEC, which has implications for new types of telecommunications, optical store and quantum computing.
