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New form of matter discovered
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by Evie Langteau
Friday, February 6, 2004
In middle school, many students are taught the basic states of matter: solid, liquid, gas and sometimes plasma. Now, a physicist at the University of Colorado-Boulder announced Jan. 28 the finding of fermionic condensate, a new type of matter formed from atoms pairing within a gas.
The new matter was discovered by Deborah Jin, a physicist at the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, and associate professor at UC-Boulder. She worked with a team including Markus Greiner, a post-doctoral researcher, and Cindy Regal, a graduate student at UC-Boulder.
Their research was based on a previous study done by two other UC-Boulder scientists who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for their discovery of a similar type of matter, “Bose-Einstein” condensate.
“Our experiment builds on many previous scientific efforts, both experimental and theoretical,” Jin said. “Our work involves cooling a small amount of gas down to temperatures very near absolute zero.”
She further explained that the gas remained confined in a vacuum chamber and was manipulated with magnetic fields and laser light. When the magnetic field was applied, the fermions, or subatomic particles, paired together instead of repelling each other as they normally did, forming the new matter, “fermionic” condensate.
“The thing that I think is interesting is that the interaction between the atoms in this reaction are controllable,” University of Wisconsin physics professor Thad Walker said, adding that other types of interactions are given to us by nature and are uncontrolled.
Jin has been working toward this goal for six and a half years. She is excited that the results of her team’s findings will provide a new way for exploring physics underlying the flow of electricity without resistance, or superconductivity, at room temperature.
“It is a very important step forward, which demonstrates experimentally the possibility of superconductivity in cold atomic gases,” UW physics professor Mark Saffman said. He also believes it is advancing our understanding of superconductivity in general.
“Practical room-temperature superconductors would have an enormous impact,” Jin said. Some examples are high-speed trains, advances in medical technology and using energy storage to strengthen power stability. Saffman also believes the discovery may have an impact on energy and power distribution, but he believes that is far into the future.
“Seeing this new ‘fermionic’ condensate in a gas of atoms opens up a new direction for research,” Jin said.
She also said she hopes to continue her research and learn more about quantum behaviors such as superconductivity and superfluidity.
