Physicists bring human-scale object to near standstill, reaching a quantum state
To the human eye, most stationary objects appear to be just that — still, and completely at rest. Yet if we were handed a quantum lens, allowing us to see objects at the scale of individual atoms, what was an apple sitting idly on our desk would appear as a teeming collection of vibrating particles, very much in motion.
In the last few decades, physicists have found ways to super-cool objects so that their atoms are at a near standstill, or in their “motional ground state.” To date, physicists have wrestled small objects such as clouds of millions of atoms, or nanogram-scale objects, into such pure quantum states.
Now for the first time, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have cooled a large, human-scale object to close to its motional ground state. The object isn’t tangible in the sense of being situated at one location, but is the combined motion of four separate objects, each weighing about 40 kilograms. The “object” that the researchers cooled has an estimated mass of about 10 kilograms, and comprises about 1×1026, or nearly 1 octillion, atoms.
The researchers took advantage of the ability of the Laser Interfrometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) to measure the motion of the masses with extreme precision and super-cool the collective motion of the masses to 77 nanokelvins, just shy of the object’s predicted ground state of 10 nanokelvins.
Their results, appearing today in Science, represent the largest object to be cooled to close to its motional ground state. The scientists say they now have a chance to observe the effect of gravity on a massive quantum object.
“Nobody has ever observed how gravity acts on massive quantum states,” says Vivishek Sudhir, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, who directed the project. “We’ve demonstrated how to prepare kilogram-scale objects in quantum states. This finally opens the door to an experimental study of how gravity might affect large quantum objects, something hitherto only dreamed of.”
The study’s authors are members of the LIGO Laboratory, and include lead author and graduate student Chris Whittle, postdoc Evan Hall, research scientist Sheila Dwyer, Dean of the School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics Nergis Mavalvala, and assistant professor of mechanical engineering Vivishek Sudhir. More