Quantum Boomerang Made by UCSB Quantum Foundry Physicists

Researchers have demonstrated a phenomenon known as the quantum boomerang effect for the first time. David Weld at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues cooled hundreds of thousands of lithium atoms close to absolute zero inside a small vacuum-sealed box. They used lasers to arrange the atoms in a line and keep them in a particular quantum state that they hoped would reveal the boomerang effect. Weld and his colleagues presented the new experiment at the DAMOP conference in Orlando, Florida, earlier this month.