Physicist creates the fifth state of matter from their living room

A physicist in the UK has created the fifth state of matter from her living room during the coronavirus lockdown using quantum technology.

Dr Amruta Gadge from the University of Sussex created a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) – a state of matter where extremely cold atoms clump together and act as if they were a single entity.

Despite working from her living room two miles away from the lab, Dr Gadge was able to use her computer to control lasers and radio waves and create the BEC.

Researchers at the university’s quantum department think it’s the first time someone has established a BEC remotely in a lab that didn’t previously have one.

The achievement could provide a blueprint for using a computer to operate quantum technology remotely in inaccessible environments such as space or underwater.

Quantum technology makes use of the spooky effects of quantum physics to vastly speed up information processing, which could lead to the most powerful computer on Earth.

‘We are all extremely excited that we can continue to conduct our experiments remotely during lockdown, and any possible future lockdowns,’ said Peter Krüger, professor of experimental physics at the University of Sussex.

‘Enhancing the capabilities of remote lab control is relevant for research applications aimed at operating quantum technology in inaccessible environments such as space, underground, in a submarine, or in extreme climates.’

The fifth state of matter, which follows solid, liquid, gas and plasma, which is produced when the atoms in a gas become ionised.

In the mid-1920s, Albert Einstein and Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose predicted that quantum mechanics can force a large number of particles to behave like a single particle, heralding research into the so-called fifth matter.  

However, it wasn’t until June 1995 that scientists created the world’s first BEC, by cooling a gas of around 2,000 rubidium atoms.

A BEC consists of a cloud of hundreds of thousands of rubidium atoms, typically is gases, cooled down to temperatures more than a billion times colder than freezing.

At these temperatures, atoms are close to absolute zero, or the point at which atoms stop moving.

Just above absolute zero, however, atoms take on a different property and coalesce into a single quantum object, which can sense very low magnetic fields.

‘We use multiple carefully timed steps of laser and radio wave cooling to prepare rubidium gases at these ultralow temperatures,’ said Professor Krüger. 

‘This requires accurate computer control of laser light, magnets and electric currents in microchips based on vigilant monitoring of environmental conditions in the lab while nobody is able to be there to check in person.’ 

The University of Sussex’s Quantum Systems & Devices, just outside of Brighton, conducts experiments with the aim of using a BEC as a magnetic sensor.

Just in time before lockdown measures ruled that those who can work from home should do so, the researchers set-up a 2D magnetic optical trap, an odd-looking set of metal apparatus that uses lasers and magnets, to produce trapped atoms. 

Dr Gadge was able to make the complex calculations and run the sequence from her home by accessing the lab computers remotely.

‘The research team has been observing lockdown and working from home and so we have not been able to access our labs for weeks,’ she said.

‘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.

‘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.’

Trapped cold quantum gases are controlled to create extremely accurate and precise sensors to detect and study new materials, geometries and devices.

The research team are developing their sensors to be applied in areas such as electrical vehicle batteries, touch screens, solar cells and medical advancements such as brain imaging.

The team have been working on having a second lab with a BEC running consistently over the past nine months as part of a wider project to develop a new type of magnetic microscopy and other quantum sensors.

Sussex is part of the UK’s national quantum computing network, formed in 2013 with the mission of commercialising the first universal quantum computer.

The university published its blueprint for how to build a quantum computer back in 2017, in Science Advances.

Last October, Google claimed to have made a quantum computing breakthrough with a processor that performs a calculation in minutes that would take classical computers 10,000 years.

However, Google’s big rivals in quantum technology research including IBM took issue with Google’s claim that it had achieved the so-called act of ‘quantum supremacy’ – solving problems that no classical machine can. 

IBM, which is working on its own quantum computer design, argued that the random number generator task completed by Google’s ‘Sycamore’ quantum computer is technically achievable on a classical computer – after 10,000 years of processing.

‘Because the original meaning of the term quantum supremacy, as proposed by John Preskill in 2012, was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t, this threshold has not been met,’ IBM researchers wrote in a blog post.

Professor Winfried Hensinger, director of the Sussex Centre for Quantum Technologies, told Laboratory News at the time: ‘The problem they [Google] picked is a completely utterly useless problem – the next step will be to solve useful problems.’