News & Research Highlights

When molecules smash into each other, things happen on the quantum level. Electrons get shoved around. They may even jump from one atom to another. Spin directions can change. A chemical reaction may even take place. Since it's not possible to directly observe this kind of electron behavior, scientists want to be able to probe it with novel spectroscopies. Now, thanks to a recent theoretical study, ultracold spectroscopy looks particularly promising for elucidating electron behavior during molecular impacts.

One way to understand unstable molecules is to systematically create slightly different versions of a similar stable molecule and investigate each new molecule with identical analysis and experiments. That is exactly what researchers from JILA and CU are doing with a series of ringed molecules.

Graduate students Dave Harber and John Obrecht, postdoc Jeff McGuirk, and Fellow Eric Cornell recently devised a clever way to use a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) inside a magnetic trap to probe the quantum behavior of free space. To do this, the researchers first created a BEC inside a magnetic trap, whose shape (where the condensate forms) resembles a cereal bowl. Then as shown in the diagram to the right, they moved the BEC in the bowl closer and closer to a glass surface until distortions in the shape of the bowl appeared.

RNA molecules can perform amazing biological feats, including storing, transporting, and reading genetic blueprints as well as catalyzing chemical reactions inside living cells. To manage the latter feat, RNA molecules must rapidly fold into an exact three-dimensional (3D) shape. Understanding how RNA accomplishes this is a major scientific challenge. Former JILA postdoc Jose Hodak, Christopher Downey (doctoral candidate in Chemistry and Biochemistry), JILA graduate student Julie Fiore, Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Arthur Pardi and Fellow David Nesbitt are meeting this challenge head on.

Imagine high-school or college students so excited about physics they can hardly wait to get to class every day and learn more about how the world works. Fellow Carl Wieman recently offered cogent suggestions to new physics teachers on coming closer to this ideal. First, he recommended starting with research on how people learn physics and paying particular attention to the concept of "cognitive load." This concept, which posits that people can only process about seven ideas in short-term working memory, sets clear limits on how much information can be effectively introduced in a single lesson (or scientific talk).

It’s been more than 40 years since Russian theoretical physicist Vitaly Efimov predicted a strange form of matter called the Efimov state in 1970. In these strange states, three atoms can stick together in an infinite number of new quantum states, even though any two of the atoms can’t even form a molecule.