Scientists Play The Tiniest Game Of Baseball Using Atoms

In a game of catch, you’ll need a pitcher, a catcher, a baseball mitt, and a ball. But in the case of a group of researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, they chucked out all the necessary tools for a game of ball and replaced them with an optical trap and some atoms.
 
This may have resulted in the smallest game of catch ever invented. Here, the academics threw atoms from one optical trap to the next. The team claims that although this method has been used in the past, a particle has never been hurled freely between two sets of optical traps.
 
“The freely flying atoms move from one place to the other without being held by or interacting with the optical trap,” remarks team member Jaewook Ahn.
 
The researchers accomplished such a feat using chilled rubidium atoms to 0°K or near-absolute-zero temperature. They then used optical traps with an 800 nm laser and turned them on and off to launch the particles from each trap and into the other.

As the rubidium flew over a distance of 4.2 micrometers, they gained a speed of 65 centimeters per second before reaching their target destination. The second optical trap was turned on when the particles were within reach to catch them.
 
The test successfully produced free-flying atoms 94% of the time, and they are now working towards a 100% success rate. 
 
The research is part of an overarching quantum computing program trying to determine a new way to arrange atoms. 
 
“These types of flying atoms could enable a new type of dynamic quantum computing by allowing the relative locations of qubits—the quantum equivalent to binary bits—to be more freely changed,” expressed Ahn. “It could also be used to create collisions between individual atoms, opening a new field of atom-by-atom chemistry.”
 
 
 
[via Futurism and Phys.org, images via Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology/EurkeAlert]