Once-Theoretical Effect tagged posts

Physicists bring a Once-Theoretical Effect of Quantum Matter into Observable Reality

The Weld Lab’s quantum boomerang showed a lithium atom’s initial departure and return to average zero momentum despite periodic energy “kicks” from their quantum kicked rotor
Photo Credit: 
ROSHAN SAJJAD

Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have become the first to experimentally observe a quirky behavior of the quantum world: a “quantum boomerang” effect that occurs when particles in a disordered system are kicked out of their locations. Instead of landing elsewhere as one might expect, they turn around and come back to where they started and stop there.

“It’s really a fundamentally quantum mechanical effect,” said atomic physicist David Weld, whose lab produced the effect and documented it in a paper published in Physical Review X. “There’s no classical explanation for this phenomenon.”

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