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'Laser Tweezers' Used to Sort Atoms
luckyguesser writes to tell us that Physicists at the University of Bonn are claiming to have knocked down one more quantum computing hurdle. Utilizing what they term "laser tweezers" they were able to sort and align seven atoms while capturing it on film. The plan is to construct a quantum gate using atoms imprinted with data.
There is a bit more detail here, including a picture:
a chine-29616.shtml
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Atom-Sorting-M
for at least 5 years.
i cal_Tweezers/
Granted, it seems like their tweezers might be slightly more precise than Chicago's, but as far as I can tell, the article is little more than University of Bonn's press-release saying that they're playing in the same league. Granted, Chicago now has 5 years of experience patenting the process and developing applications with it.
http://mrsec.uchicago.edu/Nuggets/Holographic_Opt
It should be noted Chicago's method is a little more "rubic's cubish" than Bonn's "conveyor belt" setup. Coupled with what is probably a different setup for the optical trap and laser mesh, and the 5 year difference in publications, I would doubt that there would be any patent conflict and that this will wind up being a competing product.
Also, my guess is that these laser tweezers are going to play a part in the design of the first functional general nanoassemblers (of the style of Enterprise's 'replicators', not of the style of a grey goo assembler).
I as well was wondering this. They reference this "film" repeatedly, and no film is shown on there, nor a link to it. FINALLY somebody that notices these things too. I'm usually the only one to see such greivous errors as mentioning a film yet not having one.
X -11-25-3498
n en/2003/455.html
Lucky for you, I'm bored at work and have access to google's translation tools. It found a part of the university that did this, and it linked to a place that DOES have films:
Film: http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPE
Just for reference, it was linked form here:
http://www.uni-bonn.de/Aktuelles/Presseinformatio