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Tsukikage
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 Laser Barrier
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A friend of mine found this article in a science magazine called "Science News" and sent it to me. To me it sounds like the beginning of defense shields. < <;;
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One-Way Gate Mimics 'Demon' to Trap Atoms
Barrier could cool gasses to very low temperature
by David Castelvecchi
Like the entrance to hell in Dante's Inferno, this gate is one-way only. Physicists have created a laser barrier that lets atoms through only in one direction - mimicking the "demon," proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in a thought experiment, which selectively opens or closes a microscopic gate to let some atoms through but not others. The method could cool gases to temperatures close to absolute zero, making new kinds of experiments possible. "It's a very nice demonstration of the one-way barrier concept," comments Gabriel Price of the University of Texas at Austin. The laser barrier concept was first set forth in 2005 by Mark Raizen, also of UT-Austin, and his collaborators as a way to cool gases to extremely low temperatures.
Normally, collecting a gas into a smaller volume ends up increasing the gas's temperature, while letting the gas expand lowers it. But the laser barrier stuffs the gas into a smaller volume with only a minute increase in its temperature, Daniel Steck of the University of Oregon in Eugene and his colleagues report in the June 20 Physical Review Letters. Researchers could then let the gas expand and get colder than the temperature at which it started, even approaching temperatures just above absolute zero.
Steck's team first trapped a gas of rubidium atoms using laser light, essentially creating a box with walls made of electromagnetic fields. The researchers added two parallel laser beams that cut through the trap, dividing it in half. The beam on the left acted as a barrier, while the beam on the right played the demon. The researchers tuned the barrier beam to a frequency that would make it interact with the outermost electron in each rubidium atom "When those electrons were in their lowest energy state. the beam would let the atoms through. But if the electrons were in a slightly higher-energy orbit -- an "excided state" -- the beam created a repulsive force that made the atoms bounce back. Initially, no atoms were excited. Atoms approaching the beam from the left would go through the "barrier" unimpeded. But atoms approaching from the right would first have to cross the demon beam. That beam kicked (technical term is "pump") the atoms' outermost electrons into their higher-energy state. So they were turned back when they reached the barrier beam. The pumping beam acted like a demon closing a gate only when atoms tried to cross from right to left. "Eventually, all atoms will get stuck in one side," Steck says.
Unlike Dante's gate, though, this one led to a colder place. While other cooling methods work only on particular elements, the barrier technique could cool a wide variety of atoms and molecules down to less than one ten-thousandth of a Kelvin, Steck says. Such cooling allows physicists to study exotic states of matter, and could be helpful for building new kinds of atomic clocks. A similar cooling trap was described in the March 7 Physical Review Letters. A Texas team that included Raizen and Price achieved a similar result with a more complicated setup that included a magnetic as well as an optical trap, with a barrier beam between. In 1871, Maxwell described the thought experiment of an all-knowing demon that could control which particles could cross a gate between two chambers. Such an entity would have been able to sort particles and thus put more order into the universe. But the second law of thermodynamics says that the total amount of disorder is to forever increase. In fact, physicists have demonstrated that in order to lower the disorder inside the chambers, any demon will have to produce disorder elsewhere. In Steck's case, the demon's secret is rather subtle. Like all lasers, Steck's pumping beam is an orderly arrangement of photons, all traveling in the same direc¬tion. And a photon increases the energy level of a rubidium atom by scattering off of it. "But the scattered photon goes in a random direction," Steck observes. So while the atoms get a little more order in their lives, the pumping laser ends up with a little less. |
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 Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 9:21 pm
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Mike (Clodaus)
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You know I've put a lot of thought into EM barriers in the past; wondering how they could work. That's a pretty clever idea  Thanks for showing us this, Tsuki ^^
Though, of course, this means that an atom must first pass through the field before it is trapped inside. While good, it'd be nice to find a way to keep things inside without having to excite it. Not sure how a human body would respond to that... >.>
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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:54 am
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If a theory doesn't raise an eyebrow, then it's not a theory.
The content of my posts may not reflect my personal beliefs.
"...Put it inside them; men and women will never think of looking for it there..." ~The Secret of Life
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Tsukikage
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*laughs* No idea. Currently this field thing only works on small atomic particles and gas, apparently. But it sounds like the beginnings of humanities step towards shields. xD Of course that could just be the scifi nerd in me hoping for it. < <;; hehe
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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 11:42 am
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