A cloud of gas can be made invisible if you make it cold and dense.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used lasers to squeeze and cool the gas, which scattered less light. They say that the cloud will become completely invisible if they can cool it even closer to absolute zero.
Pauli blocking is a unique example of a quantum mechanical process.
A professor of physics at MIT said in a statement that they had observed a form of Pauli blocking that prevented an atom from scattering light. This is the first clear observation that this effect exists, and it shows a new phenomenon in physics.
Light-suppressing materials could be developed to prevent information loss in quantum computers.
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Wolfgang Pauli formulated the Pauli exclusion principle in 1925. All fermion particles have the same quantum state as each other, and can't be in the same space.
electrons in atoms are forced to stack themselves into shells of higher energy levels because of the spooky quantum level.
The exclusion principle keeps the electrons of separate atoms apart from each other, according to a paper co-authored by the famed physicist.
These outcomes prevent us from falling into the center of the Earth when planted on the dirt, as well as produce the startling variation of the elements of the periodic table.
The exclusion principle applies to atoms in gas. Even though atoms may be fermions bound by the Pauli exclusion principle, there are enough unoccupied energy levels for them to jump into for the principle to not affect their movement.
Send a photon into a warm gas cloud and any atom it bumps into will be able to interact with it, absorbing its incoming momentum, recoiling to a different energy level, and scattering the photon away.
You have a different story if you cool a gas down. The atoms fill all of the lowest states and form a type of matter called a Fermi sea. The particles are hemmed in by each other, unable to move up to higher energy levels or drop down to lower ones.
They're in shells and have nowhere to go if they get hit, according to the researchers. The particles can't interact with light because they're packed. Light that is sent in is blocked by Pauli.
An atom can only scatter a photon if it can move to another chair. The ability to absorb the kick and scatter the photon has been lost if all other chairs are occupied. The atom becomes transparent.
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It is very difficult to get an atomic cloud to this state. It needs incredibly low temperatures and also needs to squeeze the atoms to record densities. The researchers blasted the gas with a laser after nabbing it inside an atomic trap.
The researchers made the atoms slow and cool down by tuning the laser beam so that they collided only with atoms moving in the opposite direction. The researchers froze their cloud to 20 microkelvins.
They used a second laser to squeeze the atoms to a record density.
The physicists shined a third and final laser beam at their atoms to see how their supercooled atoms had become.
Their cooled and squeezed atoms were dimmer than their room temperature counterparts.
Two other independent teams have also cooled down two other gases to show the effect. Three papers showing Pauli blocking were published in the journal Science.
The Pauli blocking effect could be used to develop materials that suppress light.
This would be useful for improving the efficiency of quantum computers, which are currently hindered by quantum decoherence.
Light scattering is a problem in quantum computers because it means that information is leaking out. This is one way to suppress light scattering, and we are contributing to the general theme of controlling the atomic world.
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The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
