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To make an atom-sized machine, you need a quantum mechanic – India Gone Viral, Indiagoneviral.com

To make an atom-sized machine, you need a quantum mechanic – India Gone Viral, Indiagoneviral.com
To make an atom-sized machine, you need a quantum mechanic
Experiments with a single-atom device help researchers understand what quantum effects come into play when machinery shrinks to the atomic scale. Credit: Aki Honda / Center for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore

Here’s a new chapter. in the story of the miniaturisation of machines: researchers in a laboratory in Singapore have shown that a single atom can function as either an engine or a fridge. Such a device could be engineered into future computers and fuel cells to control energy flows.

“Think about how your computer or laptop has a lot of things inside it that heat up. Today you cool that with a fan that blows air. In nanomachines or quantum computers, small devices that do cooling could be something useful, ”says Dario Poletti from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

This work gives new insight into the mechanics of such devices. The work is a collaboration involving researchers at the Center for Quantum Technologies (CQT) and Department of Physics at the National University of Singapore (NUS), SUTD and at the University of Augsburg in Germany. The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal npj Quantum Information

on 1 May.

Engines and refrigerators are both machines described by thermodynamics, a branch of science that tells us how energy moves within a system and how we can extract useful work. A classical engine turns energy into useful work. A refrigerator does work to transfer heat, reducing the local temperature. They are, in some senses, opposites.

People have made small heat engines before using a atoms . The physics is not well understood so our work is important to know what is possible, ”says Manas Mukherjee, a Principal Investigator at CQT, NUS, who led the experimental work.

The researchers studied the thermodynamics of a single barium atom. They devised a scheme in which lasers move one of the atom’s electrons between two As part of a cycle, causing some energy to be pushed into the atom’s vibrations. Like a car engine consumes petrol to both move pistons and charge up its battery, the atom uses energy from lasers as fuel to increase its vibrating motion. The atom’s vibrations act like a battery, storing energy that can be extracted later. Rearrange the cycle and the atom acts like a fridge, removing energy from the vibrations. In either mode of operation, quantum effects show up in correlations between the atom’s electronic states and vibrations. “At this scale, the

(41534. DOI:

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