Simply Weird Stuff: Making Supersolids with Ultracold Gas Atoms
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 17:42
in Physics & Chemistry
Physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland have proposed a recipe for turning ultracold “boson” atoms—the ingredients of Bose-Einstein condensates—into a “supersolid,” an exotic state of matter that behaves simultaneously as a solid and a friction-free superfluid. While scientists have found evidence for supersolids in complex liquid helium mixtures, a supersolid formed from such weakly interacting gas atoms would be simpler to understand, potentially providing clues for making a host of new “quantum materials” whose bizarre properties could expand physicists` notions of what is possible with matter.