Filipino scientist leads international study on 'dark' quantum matter
MANILA, Philippines — Physicist Dr. Jayson Cosme from the University of the Philippines – Diliman College of Science National Institute of Physics led a research team to develop a special type of "dark" matter that cannot be observed with standard laboratory methods.
The research of Cosme and his team, all of them based in Hamburg, Germany, were published on Physical Review Letters nearly a year since its reception.
Scientists use lasers to slow down atoms' movement in a material, causing a drop in temperature to absolute zero that allows atoms to condense together into a new state of matter with quantum properties, behavior similar to one giant atom.
Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose first predicted the existence of such leading to what is called a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), which presently can be observed with special cameras.
Cosme’s team, however, used lasers to manipulate atoms further.
"By shaking BECs in the right way, we can cause them to become quantum objects that don’t absorb, reflect, nor emit light — hence, 'dark,'" said Dr. Cosme in an article published on the web site of the University of the Philippines-Diliman College of Science.
"We show that the dark state concept provides a general approach to efficiently prepare complex many-body states in an open quantum system," noted the research's abstract portion.
The Filipino scientist expressed gratitude for his colleagues, including Andreas Hemmerich, Ludwig Mathey, and first author Jim Skulte. Also collaborating on the research were Phatthamon Kongkhambut, Sahana Rao and Hans Keßler.
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