Physicists create first-ever Bose-Einstein condensate made of molecules
A team of physicists has successfully created a unique quantum state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) out of molecules. The team is led by Sebastian Will at Columbia University, who received a U.S. National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development award to support his research. The findings were published in the journal Nature. While BECs have previously been achieved with atoms of a single element, this is the first creation of a molecular BEC. Its greater period of stability will allow scientists to test longstanding theories in quantum phenomena, including superconductivity, superfluidity and more. Molecular BECs also hold the potential to outperform single-element BECs by creating longer-ranging interactions in quantum simulators, allowing for more complicated models. Predicted in the 1920s by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose, BECs were first achieved in laboratories in the 1990s. All BECs require ultracold conditions and are neither gas, liquid n...