Tag Archives: Natalia Berloff

Quantum mechanics and the naked eye

Dual Wave/Particle Nature of Light Credit: Meeblax from Flickr

It’s a stunning image and it accompanies a fascinating story about a team at the University of Cambridge. The researchers built a chip that converts electrons to a quantum state where they emit light that’s visible to the naked eye. Here’s more from a Jan. 9, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

Quantum mechanics normally shows its influence only for tiny particles at ultralow temperatures, but the team mixed electrons with light to synthesise supersized quantum particles the thickness of a human hair, that behave like superconductors.

Building microscopic cavities which tightly trap light into the vicinity of electrons within the chip, they produced new particles called ‘polaritons’ which weigh very little, encouraging them to roam widely.

The Jan. 8, 2012 news release on the University of Cambridge website notes this,

Dr Gab Christmann working with Professor Jeremy Baumberg and Dr Natalia Berloff of the University of Cambridge, together with a team in Crete, produced the special new samples needed which allow the polaritons to flow around at will without getting stuck.

According to Christmann: “These polaritons overwhelmingly prefer to march in step with each other, entangling themselves quantum mechanically.”

By moving the laser beams apart, Dr Christmann and his colleagues directly controlled the sloshing of the quantum liquid, forming a pendulum beating a million times faster than a human heart.

In the end, these scientists are trying to produce a generation of ultrasensitive gyroscopes that would measure gravity, magnetic field, and create quantum circuits based on an electrical battery developed from this discovery about electrons and polaritons.

It never occurred to me that quantum mechanics could be made visible and it seems I’m not the only one (from the University of Cambridge news release),

But as Christmann says: “Just to see and prod quantum mechanics working in front of your eyes is amazing.”