A bizarre state of matter just got weirder — and more useful. Physicists have succeeded in cooling down molecules so much that hundreds of them lock in step, making a single gigantic quantum state. These systems could be used to explore exotic physics, such as by creating solid materials that can flow without resistance, or could form the basis of a new kind of quantum computer.
Physicists have made similar states, known as Bose–Einstein condensates, with atoms since 1995, and used them to understand a wide variety of quantum phenomena. But they have also longed to make such condensates from stable molecules. Molecules interact in more-complicated ways than atoms, offering much richer opportunities for research and quantum technologies. But they are also much harder to cool to the billionths of a degree above absolute zero needed to create a condensate.
“Physicists have been trying to realize Bose–Einstein condensates of molecules for more than a decade,” says Giacomo Valtolina, a physicist at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin. The research, published in Nature on 3 June1, is “the first to achieve this goal”, he says. “This paper is super exciting.”
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