Did you know that there also exists a fifth state of matter apart from its four states: solid, liquid, gas and plasma? Well, in fact, there does exist a fifth state of matter, known as the Bose-Einstein Condensate(BEC). Its existence was predicted by the renowned scientists Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose in 1924. It remained as a theoretical prediction for several years, until 1995, when the research groups of Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman of JILA at Boulder experimentally produced the first such condensate at the University of Colorado.
As you may have already guessed, the properties of this state are pretty unique too. In a BEC, matter stops behaving as independent particles, and collapses into a single quantum state that can be described with a single, uniform wavefunction. A Bose–Einstein condensate is "colder" than a solid, and may occur when atoms have very similar quantum levels, at temperatures almost nearing absolute zero, −273.15 °C (−459.67 °F).
BEC is typically formed when a gas of bosons at low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero. Under such conditions, a large fraction of bosons occupy the lowest quantum state, at which point microscopic quantum phenomena, particularly wavefunction interference, become apparent macroscopically. A BEC is formed by cooling a gas of extremely low density, about one-hundred-thousandth (1/100,000) the density of normal air, to ultra-low temperatures.
In a recent breakthrough, Dr Amruta Gadge, an Indian born physicist who works in the Quantum Systems and Devices Laboratory at the University of Sussex, has reportedly been successful in creating the Bose-Einstein Condensate or the fifth state of matter remotely, working from her home, amid the global coronavirus(COVID-19) lockdown.
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| Dr Amruta Gadge (Image Credits: SheThePeople) |
In an interview, Dr Amruta has told the Telegraph: "The Bose Einstein Condensate has been achieved in the lab in 1995 in the US. And there has been a Nobel Prize (for that work). So, BEC is not new, but you have to understand the effort that is required to achieve this Condensate given that the theory was developed in 1920s and the first time they were able to achieve it in the lab was in 1995…. But now what’s new is that we are able to do it remotely.”
The Mumbai-born physicist first attended St Xavier’s College in Mumbai and then did her masters at the University of Pune. She also worked at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. She resides two miles away from the lab where she works.
Dr Amruta has reportedly made use of the technology on her computer to control lasers and radio waves and create the BEC. Now, researchers believe that this achievement could provide a blueprint for operating quantum tech in space or underwater. They claim this is an important feat in modern science as it could help them to operate quantum tech remotely in otherwise inaccessible environments like space or underwater.
A "Stay Home-Stay Safe" breakthrough by Dr Amruta
Achieving such a feat while not working in a lab is really impressive, and when asked about her complex experiments and calculations, and how she managed to do it from her home, Dr Amruta explained to Lab News, “The research team has been observing lockdown and working from home and so we have not been able to access our labs for weeks. The process has been a lot slower than if I had been in the lab as the experiment is unstable and I’ve had to give 10 to 15 minutes of cooling time between each run.”
She concluded, “This is obviously not as efficient and way more laborious to do manually because I’ve not been able to do systematic scans or fix the instability like I could working in the lab. But we were determined to keep our research going so we have been exploring new ways of running our experiments remotely.”
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