What is bec in chemistry

Lithium atoms belong to a class of particle called fermions. This means that they cannot exist in the same physical state as one another - the exact opposite of what happens in a BEC. When the atoms become molecules, they cross into another class of particle, bosons, which coexist comfortably. A lithium condensate occupies the border between these states. Some of the molecules within it can split up, back into fermionic atoms.

These can form pairs that are superconducting, but not condensed. A fermionic condensate could be used to study fundamental particles - electrons, neutrons and protons are also fermions - as well as quantum computing and neutron stars, the super-dense leftovers of stellar explosions. Jochim, S. Bose-Einstein condensation of molecules. Science , published online, Greiner, M. A molecular Bose-Einstein condensate emerges from a Fermi sea.

Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Reprints and Permissions. It means one that can be defined by a wave function - on a near-macroscopic scale. This matter form was predicted by Albert Einstein in based on the quantum formulations of the Indian physicist named Satyendra Nath Bose. BEC research has expanded the quantum physics understanding and has led to the discovery of new physical effects. Traces back to , BEC theory, when Bose considered how photon groups behave.

The former type, known as bosons, includes photons, whose spin is given as 1. As noted by Bose, the two classes behave in a different way, noticed in Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics. Bose was working on statistical problems in quantum mechanics, and sent his ideas to Albert Einstein. Einstein thought them important enough to get them published.

As importantly, Einstein saw that Bose's mathematics — later known as Bose-Einstein statistics — could be applied to atoms as well as light. What the two found was that ordinarily, atoms have to have certain energies — in fact one of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics is that the energy of an atom or other subatomic particle can't be arbitrary. This is why electrons, for example, have discrete "orbitals" that they have to occupy, and why they give off photons of specific wavelengths when they drop from one orbital, or energy level, to another.

But cool the atoms to within billionths of a degree of absolute zero and some atoms begin to fall into the same energy level, becoming indistinguishable. That's why the atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate behave like "super atoms. It means that a small fraction of the condensate can overcome a barrier that could not be overcome by a classical particle. A fraction of the condensate "tunnels" through this barrier. This property gives rise to other quantum mechanical effects like the Josephson-Effect.

The Josephson-Effect might become very important in the future. Quantum Computers work on a absolutely different basis than our normal computers. Due to this they are incredibly fast in some applications. For example a future quantum computer should be able to hack the strongest encryptions, available today, within a few seconds.

Quantum Computers don't use, like normal computers, bits as elementary units instead they use quantum bits , also called qubits for their calculations. Due to the fact that a BEC is a macroscopic quantum object it should be possible to construct a robust qubit out of it, eventually by utilizing the Josephson-Effect.

Todays quantum computers have to be cooled down slightly above the absolute zero point. Because of this, operation of quantum computers is very elaborate, and a home use unthinkable at the moment. The quasi particles of spin waves, in a crystal, the magnons, are also able to undergo a Bose Einstein Condensation. The advantage of this system is that Bose Einstein Condensation can take place even at room temperature. Probably the reader is not aware of all the terms that were used in the last passage; they will be explained in the following.