Atom Chips.

• Autores: Jakob Reichel
• Localización: Scientific American, ISSN 0036-8733, Vol. 292, Nº. 2, 2005, págs. 46-53
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The article focuses on how magnetic fields on a microchip can produce tiny, coherent clouds of atoms called Bose-Einstein condensates, and how such atom chips could have uses in ultraprecise sensors for aircraft and in quantum computing. A century after its conception, quantum mechanics continues to be a disturbing theory. It tells us to think of all matter as waves, and yet in all objects that surround us these matter waves are far too small to be seen. Recently, however, this picture has started to change. Physicists are learning to preserve the weirdness of quantum mechanics on larger and larger scales and to observe it in increasingly direct ways. One particularly beautiful example of this trend was the achievement of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of atoms in 1995. In a BEC, hundreds of thousands of atoms gather in the same quantum-mechanical state. Their individual matter waves all become exactly superposed. Because the resulting giant matter wave contains so many atoms, it is easy to observe: once a BEC is there, it takes hardly more than a video camera to see that matter has a wavy nature! This unprecedented accessibility of matter waves has created a veritable BEC boom. The favorite occupation of quantum physicists these days is to think of practical ways to make a quantum computer: with trapped ions, with large molecules, with electron spins--or maybe with BECs on atom chips. The idea is tempting because such a quantum chip seems so attractively similar to a traditional microelectronics chip and at the same time so radically new. INSETS: Overview/Atom Chips;COOLING A GAS OF ATOMS.