BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. physicists have used radio waves to dampen the motion of a miniature mechanical oscillator containing more than a quadrillion atoms.
Researchers who developed the technology at the National Institute of Standards and Technology said it might open a window into the quantum world using smaller and simpler equipment.
Visible and ultraviolet laser light has been used for years to cool trapped atoms -- and more recently larger objects -- by reducing the extent of their thermal motion.
Now, applying a different form of radiation for a similar purpose, NIST physicists said they've demonstrated radio-frequency cooling of a relatively large object might offer a new tool for exploring the elusive boundary where the familiar rules of the everyday, macroscale world give way to the bizarre quantum behavior seen in the smallest particles of matter and light.
The physicists also said the radio-frequency circuit could be made small enough to be incorporated on a chip with tiny oscillators -- a focus of intensive research for use in sensors to detect, for example, molecular forces.
The research is to be published in a future issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.
