Mimicking Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids Inside A Single Atom

Rice University physicists have built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom. Rice's team, along with collaborators from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Vienna University of Technology, have shown that they can make an electron orbit the atomic nucleus in the same way that Jupiter's Trojan asteroids orbit the sun. The findings uphold a 1920 prediction by physicist Niels Bohr.

Transcript

00:00:05 recently effects seen in the solar system have been demonstrated using single atoms here at Rice University early in the last century it was Rec recognized that classical mechanics as developed by Newton would not explain the behavior of atoms this led to the development of quantum mechanics however with recent advances in experimental technique it is now possible to produce

00:00:29 highly excited ATS which are physically very large about the size of the period at the end of a sentence we use the laser to excite the atom so when we do the experiment we need to uh excite atom to a certain state which we want such atoms behave much as a classical system and using them it has been possible then to reproduce in atoms effects that are seen in the solar system in particular

00:00:55 we've been able to create electronic wave packets whose Behavior mimics that of the Trojan asteroids the Trojan asteroids are shown here they're they're trapped in the combined gravitational potential of the Sun and Jupiter and orbit with the planet 60° ahead and 60° behind in the atomic work the effect of the planet is reproduced by an

00:01:20 oscillating electric field such as shown here using this electric field it's possible to create a localized electronic state that remains local IED as it moves in a near circular orbit about the nucleus much as do the Trojan asteroids around the Sun this locking is remarkably robust and by changing the period of the electronic sine wave we're able to move the orbits to different

00:01:49 radi as demonstrated here where we've moved it out to a much larger orbit radius this is the chamber where we do our experiment so we have a laser light which is generated from our optic table and the laser go through this way and finally end up in the inside this chamber this copper box is what is inside this chamber so the atoms is actually in the center of this copper

00:02:18 box we have a laser beam going in this way and the atomic beam going in this way and they intersect each other in the center of here this is what everything happens the level of control that can be achieved using these techniques is remarkable and has future applications in for example Quantum Computing and in chaotic computing