Slashdot Mirror
Transistor Made From Bose-Einstein Condensate
holy_calamity writes "US researchers have made a transistor from a Bose-Einstein condensate. They claim it to be the first step towards 'atomic circuits' that run with atoms instead of electrons. 'A small number of atoms can be used to control the flow of a large number of atoms, in much the same way that an FET uses a gate voltage to control a large electric current,' says lead research Alex Zozulya. The abstract of their paper is freely available."
More physics, more chemistry...
Electrons are areas of probability density for energy.
Photons are discrete packets of energy.
Energy is related to mass, most commonly, as E=mc^2.
In conventional circuits there is a signal passed by energy. That energy is passed in bulk as the movement of electricity, or the flux of the electron fields around the atoms which make up the conducting wire.
If one could deal in smaller amounts of energy--say the quanta required to excite an electron from one energy level to the next--then one is dealing arguably in portions of electrons. Arguably.
It's the same principle as the recent research using fiberobtic materials for processor fabrication. If one uses light, rather than electricity, then friction is minimized, energy lost to heat is minimized, and the bulk signal of photon flux can be modulated more quickly than the bulk signal of electron flux.
E=mc^2. It's all the same. You can pass bowling balls or you can pass bee-bees.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
With a really, really, really big heat sink.