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Record of the lowest artificially created temperature

28.09.2021

Physicists from Germany have managed to get the lowest temperature recorded in the history of science, just 38 picokelvins, 38 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero. Their experiment used the free-falling process of a quantum gas cloud and turning the magnetic field on and off in order to slow down the atoms of the gas almost to a complete stop of their thermal motion.

The point of absolute zero, -273.15 degrees Celsius, is the lowest temperature that can be obtained according to all the canons of thermodynamics. At such a temperature, the thermal motion of atoms stops completely and these atoms cease to have any kinetic energy, which should lead to the appearance of very strange effects. However, reaching the point of absolute zero and below is unattainable in practice due to the fact that it is physically impossible to take absolutely all of their kinetic energy from atoms.

However, scientists are constantly trying to get closer to the point of absolute zero, a few years ago scientists from Harvard successfully performed the "coldest" chemical reaction at a temperature of 500 nanokelvins, 500 millionths of a degree above absolute zero. Somewhat later, experiments were carried out at the Cold Atom Lab aboard the International Space Station at a temperature of 100 nanokelvins.

However, the temperatures mentioned above are quite high compared to the latest achievement of German scientists. And in order to get that temperature, the scientists used a cloud of 100 rubidium atoms trapped in a magnetic trap inside a vacuum chamber. First, a cloud of atoms was cooled to a temperature at which a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate formed, all of whose atoms have a quantum relationship. Due to this relationship, the entire cloud of condensate behaves like one large atom, which makes it possible to see the manifestation of quantum effects on a macro scale.

The Bose-Einstein condensate was formed at a temperature of two billionths above the absolute zero point, but it was not yet cold enough. The experiment was carried out in a special Bremen Drop Tower, which has a vacuum chamber with magnetic traps, 120 meters high, in which free-fall experiments are performed. And while the cloud of the Bose-Einstein condensate fell freely under the influence of gravity, scientists turned on and off the magnetic strictly at pre-calculated points in time.

When the magnetic field was turned on, the Bose-Einstein condensate cloud contracted somewhat. When the magnetic field was turned off, the condensate cloud expanded. The moments of turning on and off the magnetic field were synchronized in such a way that the effect exerted by this led to an almost complete stoppage of the movement of condensate atoms, which means an effective decrease in temperature.

During such an experiment, scientists managed to achieve and maintain a record low temperature for 2 seconds. However, the calculations of the created mathematical models showed that in space in conditions of microgravity or weightlessness on board the satellite, for example, such a temperature can last for 17 seconds, which will be enough to conduct very complex experiments.

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