TheNocturnalEgyptian
9th February 2011, 01:53 PM
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-02/07/glass-melt-quantum-mechanics
http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x413/g_j/glass.png
Quantum mechanics researchers in California have discovered that glass can be melted by cooling it to a temperature close to absolute zero -- as cold as deepest space.
Glass forms when certain materials, usually silica, are cooled quickly. Others glasses exist too -- made from flouride, aluminosilicates, phosphate, borate and chalcogenide -- which have specialist uses, often in the field of fibreoptics.
Professor Eran Rabani from Tel Aviv University's school of chemistry, however, believes that at very low temperatures, it might be possible for a glass to return to its liquid state, due to the way molecules in materials are ordered. "We hope that future laboratory experiments will prove our predictions," he said.
The research was presented in a paper titled " Quantum fluctuations can promote or inhibit glass formation", published in the journal Nature Physics. The paper's abstract reads: "We observe that large quantum fluctuations serve to inhibit glass formation as tunnelling and zero-point energy allow particles to traverse barriers facilitating movement.
"However, as the classical limit is approached a regime is observed in which quantum effects slow down relaxation making the quantum system more glassy than the classical system. This dynamical 'reentrance' occurs in the absence of obvious structural changes and has no counterpart in the phenomenology of classical glass-forming systems."
The research follows Nobel-Prize-winner Philip Warren Anderson's call for research to focus on classical glasses, calling it one of the biggest unsolved problems in condensed matter physics. Quantum glasses hadn't previously been explored closely, and the question of whether the interesting classical properties of glass would be repeated at a quantum level had remained unsolved. Work into the field continues.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110202102748.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride_glass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminosilicate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate_glass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcogenide_glass
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v7/n2/full/nphys1865.html
http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x413/g_j/glass.png
Quantum mechanics researchers in California have discovered that glass can be melted by cooling it to a temperature close to absolute zero -- as cold as deepest space.
Glass forms when certain materials, usually silica, are cooled quickly. Others glasses exist too -- made from flouride, aluminosilicates, phosphate, borate and chalcogenide -- which have specialist uses, often in the field of fibreoptics.
Professor Eran Rabani from Tel Aviv University's school of chemistry, however, believes that at very low temperatures, it might be possible for a glass to return to its liquid state, due to the way molecules in materials are ordered. "We hope that future laboratory experiments will prove our predictions," he said.
The research was presented in a paper titled " Quantum fluctuations can promote or inhibit glass formation", published in the journal Nature Physics. The paper's abstract reads: "We observe that large quantum fluctuations serve to inhibit glass formation as tunnelling and zero-point energy allow particles to traverse barriers facilitating movement.
"However, as the classical limit is approached a regime is observed in which quantum effects slow down relaxation making the quantum system more glassy than the classical system. This dynamical 'reentrance' occurs in the absence of obvious structural changes and has no counterpart in the phenomenology of classical glass-forming systems."
The research follows Nobel-Prize-winner Philip Warren Anderson's call for research to focus on classical glasses, calling it one of the biggest unsolved problems in condensed matter physics. Quantum glasses hadn't previously been explored closely, and the question of whether the interesting classical properties of glass would be repeated at a quantum level had remained unsolved. Work into the field continues.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110202102748.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride_glass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminosilicate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate_glass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcogenide_glass
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v7/n2/full/nphys1865.html