Contact: Laura Ost
laura.ost@nist.gov
303-497-4880
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

JILA Measurements Recast Usual View of Elusive Force

Caption: JILA scientists measured how temperature affects the Casimir-Polder force using an apparatus that holds four small squares of glass inside a vacuum chamber. A cloud of ultracold atoms in a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) was held a few micrometers below one piece of glass, and the force was calculated based on the wiggling of the BEC. Warmer glass magnified the attraction between the surface and the atoms.

Credit: E. Cornell group/JILA

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