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Forget about wires, silicon and electricity. Physicists have developed a new type of circuit that is little more than a puff of gas dancing in laser beams. By choreographing the atoms of this ultracold gas to flow as a current that can be controlled and switched on and off, the scientists have taken a step toward building the world’s first “atomtronic” device.
Atomtronics is a young, small and mostly theoretical field based on the idea that atoms in unusual quantum states of matter may provide an alternative to the tried-and-true electron for making useful devices. The field’s proponents have drawn up blueprints for atomic versions of many traditional electronic components — from wires and batteries to transistors and diodes.
At the Joint Quantum Institute in Gaithersburg, Md., graduate student Anand Ramanathan and his colleagues hope to use an ultracold gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate to make atomtronic sensors. In an upcoming paper in Physical Review Letters, the team reports creating this gas by cooling sodium atoms suspended in magnetic fields. The researchers then trapped the atoms in a pair of crossed laser beams and further chilled the atoms to less than 10 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. The two beams also shaped the condensate that formed at these low temperatures into a flattened doughnut with a radius of about 20 micrometers.
www.sciencenews.org
Atomtronics is a young, small and mostly theoretical field based on the idea that atoms in unusual quantum states of matter may provide an alternative to the tried-and-true electron for making useful devices. The field’s proponents have drawn up blueprints for atomic versions of many traditional electronic components — from wires and batteries to transistors and diodes.
At the Joint Quantum Institute in Gaithersburg, Md., graduate student Anand Ramanathan and his colleagues hope to use an ultracold gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate to make atomtronic sensors. In an upcoming paper in Physical Review Letters, the team reports creating this gas by cooling sodium atoms suspended in magnetic fields. The researchers then trapped the atoms in a pair of crossed laser beams and further chilled the atoms to less than 10 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. The two beams also shaped the condensate that formed at these low temperatures into a flattened doughnut with a radius of about 20 micrometers.
'Atomtronics' may be the new 'electronics'
A research team has created a quantum circuit that may help lead to the development of a new class of devices.
www.sciencenews.org
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