The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger has made an effort to make his research in the field of quantum mechanics understandable to laymen.
In 1935 he invented a cat sitting in a box, which is dead and alive at the same time. Only when a researcher examines the animal does it permanently assume one of the two states - either living or dead. An idea that can not be explained from everyday experience. Became known the paradoxical mind game under the term "Schrödinger's cat".
Researchers have been trying for decades to unite the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics with classical physics. Based on Schrödinger's cat, for example, there is matter that behaves like a particle and a wave at the same time. The best known example of this is light.
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In the quantum state, light particles, so-called photons, can even stay in two places at the same time. Other particles, such as electrons or neutrons, atoms or even molecules are capable of doing so. But how much mass can a molecule have to fall under the laws of quantum mechanics?
Markus Arndt from the University of Vienna and his team have now pushed this border further back. They have brought nearly 2000 atoms with 25,000 atomic mass units to at least two places at the same time. New record, they report in the journal "Nature Physics". The most massive molecule to date consisted of 800 atoms and was also quantified by the Viennese researchers.
Double-slit experiment from the school
To understand in detail what it is about, helps an experiment that almost everyone knows from school: A ray of light shines on a double slit. On a screen behind it light and dark stripes can be seen. These are photons that behave like waves in experiments. At the double gap they are distracted. In the bright areas, the light waves are superimposed, in the dark areas, they lift up. Experts speak of interference.
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Double-column experiment: photons behave like a wave here, not like a particle
In everyday life, the phenomenon can be observed on the surface of bodies of water. Overlying water molecules form wave crests there, in between wave troughs are formed. With one difference: there are always several particles in the water that create the pattern. In quantum physics, a single photon can bring interference patterns onto a screen. It flies through both slots in the double slit simultaneously and is thus at the same time in two places.
The boundary between quantum world and classical physics
"In quantum physics, interference exists only when a particle has two or more possibilities to reach the goal, which are fundamentally indistinguishable," explains researcher Arndt. In the double-slit experiment this is the case if the matter source is equidistant from both slits.
The researchers around Arndt have produced stable molecules of nearly 2000 atoms in the laboratory and sent them through a two-meter-long matter-wave interferometer, which was developed for such experiments at the University of Vienna. The special atoms from the experiment consist of 40,000 protons, neutrons and electrons and remained in the superposition state for seven milliseconds - ie simultaneously at at least two different locations.
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The experiments showed that quantum mechanics, "in all its madness", can be extended to surprisingly large molecules, explains physicist Yaakov Fein, who was also involved in the experiment.
From which mass molecules lose their wave properties, the scientists want to test in further experiments. Until then, they are using the data from the experiments to improve models of theoretical physics that describe how a supposed transition from the quantum into the familiar world could take place.
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