Scientists have made nanoparticles that spin around each other at a rate of a billion times per second, creating the fastest mechanical rotation in history.
Nanoparticles are microscopic particles. There is currently an interest in nanoparticle research because of a wide array of potential applications, particularly in electronic, optical and biomedical fields.
Scientists now report fast-spinning particles that can test the limits of physics. Researchers were conducting studies on how light's energy can move nanoparticles and ended up producing record spin frequencies.
Two teams of researchers produced their spinning nanoparticles similarly. They independently achieved the intense spin using levitated optomechanical systems that are extremely isolated from any outside environment. This creates a testing ground for basic fundamentals of physics
Nanoparticles in vacuum spin very fast because there is no air that creates resistance. The atoms will not blow apart until such time the force of the spin overcomes the force that holds them together.
The first team, which was studying how to use particles levitated by light in a vacuum as torsion balance, created and levitated nanoscale silica dumbbells the size of a virus. Torsion balance is a tool used to measure very weak forces.
The researchers, however, found that when a circularized polarized light is shone into the dumbbell, the latter would spin with the incredible speed of a billion times per second. If the rotations are fast enough, the particles could provide a way to measure the friction of particles against spacetime.
"Levitated optomechanics has great potentials in precision measurements, thermodynamics, macroscopic quantum mechanics and quantum sensing." wrote Tongcang Li, from Purdue University, and colleagues in their study to be published in Physical Review Letters.
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