Image credit: Christopher Baker, UQ
Self-forming quantum liquids on a silicon chip could revolutionise our understanding of turbulence and enable new technologies for precision navigation.
Researchers at The University of Queensland have developed the first methods to bring together quantum liquids with modern silicon-chip based technology, allowing the observations of nanoscale quantum turbulence that mirrors the behaviour of a cyclone.
Professor Warwick Bowen, from UQ’s Precision Sensing Initiative and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS), said the development provides a laboratory-scale test-bed to understand the complex dynamics of turbulent weather systems and the fundamental nature of turbulence.
“This is a significant advance providing a new way to study turbulence, often described as the oldest unsolved problem in physics”.
“This advance is enabled by the properties of quantum liquids, which are fundamentally different than everyday liquids.”
Over fifty years ago it was postulated that they could simplify the problem of turbulence. Our new technique is exciting because it allows them to be studied on a silicon chip for the first time.”
The research has implications not only on this world, but also in space where quantum liquids are predicted to exist within dense astrophysical objects.
The research could help to explain how these objects behave.
According to Dr Yauhen Sachkou, the lead author on the paper, “Rotating neutron stars lose angular momentum in fits and starts. The way this occurs is thought to hinge on quantum turbulence.”
Furthermore, the research could enable new quantum technologies for navigation.
UQ scientist Dr Christopher Baker, who co-led the research, said that silicon-chip based accelerometers with sensitivity far beyond the current state-of-the-art were now a possibility.
“In quantum liquids, the atoms behave more like waves that particles. This allows us to build laser-like sensors out of atoms.”
The research was a collaboration between researchers in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS) and ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronic Technologies (FLEET) in Australia, and the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies in New Zealand. It was supported by the United States Army Research Office and the Australian Research Council, and was published today in Science. (Coherent vortex dynamics in a strongly interacting superfluid on a silicon chip, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw9229)