In a landmark achievement in quantum physics, researchers at Columbia University have successfully created a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) from molecules, achieving a goal that has eluded scientists for decades. The team, led by physicist Sebastian Will, cooled sodium-cesium molecules to an extraordinary 5 nanoKelvin, or roughly minus 459.66 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the molecules to lose their individual identities and merge into a single quantum state, as reported in Nature.
While atomic BECs were first realized in 1995, molecular BECs have long been a challenge due to the molecules’ complex rotations and vibrations, as well as their tendency to destroy one another upon collision. The Columbia team overcame this obstacle through a technique called microwave shielding, developed in collaboration with Tijs Karman of Radboud University in the Netherlands. By applying two specific microwave fields, the molecules were made to repel each other, preventing collisions and allowing the sample to undergo evaporative cooling, where the hottest molecules are removed to lower the overall temperature.
The resulting molecular condensate, which lasted about two seconds—a long duration for such a delicate system—originated from roughly 30,000 molecules, ultimately producing a pure condensate of around 200 molecules. Will highlighted that molecular BECs could open new avenues for research, ranging from fundamental physics studies to advanced quantum simulations, marking this breakthrough as just the beginning of a promising field.
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