Superheated Bose-Einstein condensate exists above critical temperature
Wednesday, April 10, 2013 - 08:01
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org) —At very low temperatures, near absolute zero, multiple particles called bosons can form an unusual state of matter in which a large fraction of the bosons in a gas occupy the same quantum state—the lowest one—to form a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In a sense, the bosons lose their individual identities and behave like a single, very large atom. But while previously BECs have only existed below a critical temperature, scientists in a new study have shown that BECs can exist above this critical temperature for more than a minute when different components of the gas evolve at different rates.