Credit: Ye Group/JILA
False-color image of a gas of potassium-rubidium polar molecules (left) becoming denser and colder in reaching a state called quantum degeneracy (right), in which the individual molecules’ matter waves overlap to create an interdependent system.
JILA researchers have developed tools to “turn on” quantum gases of ultracold molecules, gaining control of long-distance molecular interactions for potential applications such as encoding data for quantum computing and simulations.
The new scheme for nudging a molecular gas down to its lowest energy state, called quantum degeneracy, while suppressing chemical reactions that break up molecules finally makes it possible to explore exotic quantum states in which all the molecules interact with one another.
The research is described in a Nature paper published online Dec. 9. JILA is a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder.
“Molecules are always celebrated for their long-range interactions, which can give rise to exotic quantum physics and novel control in quantum information science,” NIST/JILA Fellow Jun Ye said. “However, until now, nobody had figured out how to turn on these long-range interactions in a bulk gas.”
“Now, all this has changed. Our work showed for the first time that we can turn on an electric field to manipulate molecular interactions, get them to cool down further, and start to explore collective physics where all molecules are coupled to each other.”
The new work follows up on Ye’s many previous achievements with ultracold quantum gases. Researchers have long sought to control ultracold mo ..
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