A group led by Seth Aubin, assistant professor of physics at William & Mary, is putting finishing touches on an apparatus that will chill atoms to near absolute zero. At these low temperatures, the quantum nature of atoms takes over and they begin to follow a different set of physical laws.
Atoms normally move about according to classical Newtonian physics; however, under certain extreme conditions, Newtonian laws don’t hold and physical behavior can only be described by quantum mechanics.
Aubin plans on exploiting the non-Newtonian properties of ultracold atoms to investigate fundamental questions in quantum physics. But, for Aubin’s atoms to enter the quantum regime, they need to be cold enough.
The second phase of cooling involves moving the atoms into a magnetic bottle.
Inside the magnetic bottle the atoms will collect on an aluminum nitride chip about the size of a microchip. In this cooling phase, the atoms are shot by a stream of RF—radio waves.
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