- #1
sanman
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Recently, we've heard about research into storing anti-hydrogen as a BEC. Atom lasers are touted for their potential to make ultra-precise measurements, including at the quantum scale, because of their small DeBroglie wavelengths in comparison to light.
Once, I emailed Dr Wolfgang Ketterle immediately after he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and asked him about whether Bose-Einstein Condensate could be used to somehow achieve nuclear fusion. He good-naturedly replied back, chuckling that no, it was not possible, because the density of the BEC is far too low.
Alright, a single BEC/superatom might not be able to do this, but what about 2 or more BECs in relative motion to each other -- ie. 2 atom lasers made to interfere with each other?
My point in speculating about this idea, is that so far in our attempts at achieving nuclear fusion, we have been trying to get a bunch of particles to collide with each other. But what if you could manipulate matter as a wave, and make two such waves very sharply interfere with each other?
What if you had 2 very "powerful" atom lasers -- in this case, "power" would probably refer to mass throughput or KE -- which would be configured to maximize collisions between their respective atoms resulting in nuclear reactions.
If fusion reactions wouldn't produce enough power, then could atom lasers be used for conveniently producing matter-antimatter collisions?
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0511/0511113v3.pdf
Once, I emailed Dr Wolfgang Ketterle immediately after he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and asked him about whether Bose-Einstein Condensate could be used to somehow achieve nuclear fusion. He good-naturedly replied back, chuckling that no, it was not possible, because the density of the BEC is far too low.
Alright, a single BEC/superatom might not be able to do this, but what about 2 or more BECs in relative motion to each other -- ie. 2 atom lasers made to interfere with each other?
My point in speculating about this idea, is that so far in our attempts at achieving nuclear fusion, we have been trying to get a bunch of particles to collide with each other. But what if you could manipulate matter as a wave, and make two such waves very sharply interfere with each other?
What if you had 2 very "powerful" atom lasers -- in this case, "power" would probably refer to mass throughput or KE -- which would be configured to maximize collisions between their respective atoms resulting in nuclear reactions.
If fusion reactions wouldn't produce enough power, then could atom lasers be used for conveniently producing matter-antimatter collisions?
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0511/0511113v3.pdf
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