Physicists Create 'Quantum Knots' (amherst.edu)

New submitter Kekke writes with news that researchers from Amherst College and Aalto University have figured out a way to create knotted solitary waves in a quantum-mechanical field. They call their creation "quantum knots". Professor David Hall said, "First we cooled a gas of rubidium atoms down to billionths of a degree above zero, at which point it became a superfluid—a tiny, well-ordered environment in which these particle-like objects can exist. Then we exposed the superfluid to a rapid change of a specifically tailored magnetic field, which tied the knot in less than a thousandth of a second." Research group leader Mikko Möttönen added, "For decades, physicists have been theoretically predicting that it should be possible to have knots in quantum fields, but nobody else has been able to make one. Now that we have seen these exotic beasts, we are really excited to study their peculiar properties."