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This story is from the category Computing Power
Posted by: Site Administration Date posted: 07/02/2010 Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of modern physics is figuring out how to realize and take advantage of strange quantum behaviors in progressively larger and more complex systems. Progress along this front is expected to shed insight into the nature of quantum mechanics and lead to many novel applications. With this goal in mind, scientists have recently proposed a unique approach that involves optically levitating a nano-mechanical system in order to cool it to its quantum ground state, where the amount of motion of the system reaches the fundamental minimum set by intrinsic quantum fluctuations. The researchers, Darrick E. Chang, et al., from institutions in the US and Austria, are publishing their study in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A similar proposal has simultaneously been put forth by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Germany. “Over the next several years, there will be a concerted effort by a number of groups worldwide to observe and manipulate quantum behavior in progressively larger and more complex mechanical systems,” Chang, from the California Institute of Technology, said. “A major obstacle is the interaction between these systems and their environments, which tends to ‘leak away’ the quantum nature of these systems and return them to classical states. We've proposed a technique that can allow these interactions to be dramatically suppressed, by using optical forces to levitate such systems and remove them from any direct contact with material surroundings. We have shown in detail that this enables quantum behavior to emerge in the case of a levitated nanosphere, but we anticipate that these ideas can also be applied to a wide class of other systems and over a large range of system size scales.” See the full Story via external site: www.physorg.com Most recent stories in this category (Computing Power): 15/08/2010: The Danger Of Green Laser Pointers |
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