Ultracold gases research: why do we need it?

Every taxpayer has a right to wonder about how allocated money has enriched their quality of life. Fundamental science is a specific case in point: no one can predict final results before actually doing the scientific research. But in spite of this “vision impossible”, researchers do their work and invent useful things.

Let us come closer to physicists who research the particular subject of ultracold gases. Talking in more normal language, these physicists cool gases down to extremely low temperatures (a million times more chilly than in the outer space). Suffering from the supreme frost, atoms then slow down their fast chaotic movement and start behaving like big dense clouds and not small solid balls.

One of the major goals that people in this research field are trying to achieve is the quantum computer – the completely new type of calculating machine that performs operations faster. To reach the goal of the quantum computer would be a major breakthrough in the technology. Even if not, definitely many new devices will be developed on the path. Precedents exist, for example the scanning tunneling microscope, for which won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986, was invented in the laboratories of computer and IT corporation IBM.

In the framework of the European Journalism Centre’s Relate Project (a European initiative to give aspiring young science journalists opportunity to see real science) I visited the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS), Firenze, Italy. At the laboratory Professor Massimo Inguscio heads a group that conducts research into ultracold gases and says that the quantum computer is a very difficult goal, even a dream, but through putting mental efforts into solving it, useful discoveries can be made.

Professor Francesco Cataliotti is one from those who is putting in mental effort towards quantum computing. His group performs experiments where cold atoms are put close to the surface of photonic crystals (which is simply material with a periodical structure of the size of nanometers). The aim is the manipulation of single atoms (to write and read information at the atom at a specific address) and use laser light for solving this task. Compared with other solutions, theirs has smaller size and less energy consumption.

But not only building quantum computers is the vision for studying ultracold atoms. Another lab professor, Professor Guglielmo Tino, leads the research work being done on utracold gas-based optical clocks which are highly precise timepieces that are insensitive to external perturbation. He was first to propose the use of strontium in the device and he continues the research now.

Optical clocks can be used not only for pure scientific purposes like more accurate time measurements but also in such practical applications as GPS and microgravimetry (Earth’s gravitational fields). Space navigation is also included, hence the project is funded by European Space Agency.

More then one and a half scientific groups are working on the research of ultracold atoms. Whatever output will be, it seems, it will definitely move society towards better life.