Squeezing Out Disorder (IMAGE)

American Physical Society

Squeezing Out Disorder

Caption

In a cloud of cold gases (left) entropy can be reduced (right) by focusing a laser that compresses one component (blue) without affecting the other (red). Rather than heating up the blue component, some of the disorder in the squeezed gas moves to the surrounding gas cloud.

Credit

J. Catani et al., <i>Phys. Rev. Lett.</i> 103, 140401 (2009)

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