Quantum dots become more ‘atom-like’
Banin and co-workers used quantum dots made of indium arsenide, covered with a nonconducting barrier of hexane dithiol molecules and linked to a conducting gold film. The radius of the nearly spherica...
The brain is ‘classical’
Nearly all the quantum models of the brain depend on how long the brain can keep quantum coherence. Penrose argues for example, that microtubles – small hollow cylinders that help cells keep the...
First for single-photon measurements
Photons are traditionally detected by converting their energy into an electric signal, which destroys the photon in the process. An additional problem in quantum measurements is that if one variable &...
Gravity-wave detectors target quantum gravity
Both the French-Italian gravity-wave interferometer, called VIRGO, and the LIGO interferometers in the US are designed to detect very weak gravity waves by using lasers to monitor test masses placed a...
Read article: Matter makes waves
Matter makes waves
Phillips and his colleagues produced a focused directional output from the Bose-Einstein condensate by firing two laser beams into the condensate. One beam adds energy to the atoms, while the second s...
Quantum wells go metallic
Tai Chang Chiang and co-workers at Urbana confined electrons in thin films of silver ranging from 1 monolayer to around 100 monolayers thick. Just as photons resonate back and forth in an optical Fabr...
Still uncertain about Heisenberg
“Heisenberg is an intelligent man, but a typical German (that is to say a Tacitus).” So wrote Albert Einstein to his Swiss confidant Carl Seelig, in January 1953. Although the quotation do...
Putting the quantum brakes on light
Electromagnetically induced transparency relies on interference between different electronic transitions in an atom and has been used to make opaque media transparent at certain wavelengths in the pas...
Wigner crystal found
Normal metals have an equal number of electrons with spin “up” and spin “down”. However, when there are more spins pointing up than down, or vice versa, the metal becomes a fer...
The force of acoustics
“The idea of using white noise to mimic zero-point fluctuations is clever, ” said Steve Lamoreaux of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US. “The fundamentals are quite different f...
