Quantum Physics:Alice rings and monopoles (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 30, 2023, 17:51 (241 days ago) @ David Turell

More weird quantum stuff:

https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-loops-in-the-fabric-of-reality-physicists-get-f...

"Known as 'Alice rings' after the Alice of 'Wonderland' fame, the circular structures were observed by a collaboration between researchers in the US and Finland which already has a long list of discoveries concerning the distortions in quantum fields known as topological monopoles.

"The isolated equivalent of a pole on a magnet, monopoles truly sound like something Alice would have seen in her hunt for the white rabbit. Cutting a magnet in half won't succeed in separating its north from south, but monopoles can theoretically arise in the quantum machinery that gives rise to various forces and particles.

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"In 2015, just a year after proving a topological monopole's existence, Möttönen and his colleagues triumphantly succeeded in observing one in isolation for the first time in an ultra-cold state of rubidium atoms called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).

"'We are the only ones who have been able to create topological monopoles in quantum fields," Möttönen explained to ScienceAlert.

"'After creating them, it took some time for us to also study quantum knots and skyrmions before we had a close look at what happens to the topological monopole right after it has been created."

"Less than two years after their initial observation, the collaboration made a surprise discovery – monopoles could decay into other types.

"In this latest investigation, the researchers again watched a topological monopole melt into something else, only this time the end result was more like a tiny doorway into Wonderland – structures named Alice strings.

"Alice strings are closely associated with monopoles, twisting into one-sided magnetic poles whenever they close into loops. And those loops of Alice strings are known as Alice rings.

"Yet while typical monopoles might last a few thousandths of a second, Alice rings stick around for more than 80 milliseconds – some 20 times longer.

"'From a distance, the Alice ring just looks like a monopole, but the world takes a different shape when peering through the center of the ring," says David Hall, a physicist from Amherst College in the US.

"Like Alice's own looking glass, passing through the strange magnetic loop in a BEC's quantum field can turn everything on its head. Other monopoles that happen to fall through become reversed into their mirror-versions, flipping the ring into its opposite as they slide on through."

Comment: quantum physics advances get weirder and weirder in their discoveries, but this is the basis of our reality. The answer to the question 'why' can only be it is required.