Physicists believed that this quantum phenomenon was impossible. They were very wrong

This appointment of Richard FeynmanNobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to quantum electrodynamics and one of the most admired scientists of the twentieth century, condenses very well The complexity of quantum physics: “If you think you understand it, you don’t really understand quantum physics.” Quantum mechanics study the laws that govern The world of the very smallof the particles, as well as the interactions to which the atomic and subatomic structures are exposed.

Most of these rules are radically different from the laws we have become familiar with in the world in which we live. In the macroscopic world. Many physicists have spent the last century trying to understand how known quantum phenomena work, and also striving to identify unknown quantum rules. The problem is that working with the extremely small, with the particles, is very difficult. However, this does not mean that they are not successful.

To hunt and capture the elusive transition of super -artedia

Physicists Klaus Hepp and Elliott H. LIEB predicted in 1973 a quantum phenomenon known as super -transiant phase transition. For more than half a century the scientific community has worked out without success to find evidence to protect the existence of this mechanism beyond mere theory. But everything changed on April 4. That day a group of researchers from Rice University, in Texas (USA); the University of Shanghai (China); NASA’s National Laboratory (USA) or the National University of Singapore, among other scientific institutions, published an article in Scienceadvances in which he explains the procedure he has used to experimentally observe this quantum phenomenon so elusive.

Understanding what is the transition of super -transiant phase and all its implications is not simple, but we can get a rather precise idea about what this mechanism consists of if we observe it as a sudden change in a particle system that causes many of them begin to behave in a coordinated way. When this phenomenon does not occur, atoms interact in a weak way and behave in a disorganized way, but when the super -artary phase transition arises, they synchronize and exhibit the same behavior, giving rise to a new state of matter.

The most surprising thing is that this new state gives the material unusual properties from a macroscopic point of view. The researchers who have mentioned some lines above have managed to carry out the first direct observation of this mechanism. And they have succeeded by triggering the transition in a glass composed of erbium, iron and oxygen subjected to a temperature of −271.7 degrees Celsius. In addition, they exposed it to a magnetic field of no less than 7 teslas, so it was more than 100,000 times more intense than the magnetic field of the Earth. What they pursued was to induce the transition of super -transiant phase by coupling the spin of the particles. And they succeeded.

The spin is an intrinsic property of The elementary particleslike the electric charge, derived from its time of angular rotation. The first experimental evidence that endorsed its existence It arrived in 1922 Thanks to the experiments of German physicists Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach, although scientists did not begin to understand the nature of this very important property of elementary particles until a few years later. The reason why it is not easy to understand precisely what the spin is because it is a quantum phenomenon, so it is not quite correct to describe it as a conventional rotation movement in space.

Even so, the description that I have proposed in the previous paragraph is usually used for a didactic purpose because it helps us to intuit without too much effort what we are talking about. In any case, the most interesting thing is that the transition of super -transiant phase opens the door to the next generation of quantum technologies. This is the really important thing. According to physicists involved in this experiment, this mechanism can be used to put quantum sensors endowed with a much higher sensitivity than those currently available. And it can also be used to produce more robust cubits for Quantum computers. Sounds good. I hope your predictions are fulfilled.

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More information | Scienceadvances

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