Recently a UK association led by Imperial physicists has signed an agreement with Fermilab in the US to build a 100-meter-long quantum experiment.
The Matter-Wave (MAGIS-100) experiment is presently under construction at the US Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). It will allow scientists to demonstrate the superposition of atoms and advance the search for ultralight dark-matter particles.
Professor Oliver Buchmueller says, that MAGIS-100, in concert with a planned interferometer in the UK, will let us explore parts of physics that no technology can presently see.
In a new agreement, UK institutions supported by the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) have agreed to provide vital expertise and support to help the experiment investigate the mysteries of quantum physics, dark matter, and much more.
In The UK Imperial leads the Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network (AION), and signed the deal on behalf of the network, which also includes the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Liverpool.
Principal Investigator for AION Professor Oliver Buchmueller, from the Department of Physics at Imperial, said that AION members have been involved in MAGIS-100 from the beginning, so it’s exciting to see the partnership formalized.
The US and UK are well placed to share knowledge with the goal of exploring and developing quantum technologies that can answer some of the most intriguing questions in physics.MAGIS-100, in concert with a planned interferometer in the UK, will let us explore many parts of physics that no technology can presently see.
Dr Lia Merminga, Director of Fermilab, said that it is exciting to see us expand our long and celebrated partnerships with UK institutions to new scientific domains, with the highly innovative MAGIS-100 experiment. Our UK partners participate in the design, construction, and delivery of the detection system for the interferometer and will also take part in the commissioning and data analysis of the experiment.
Pioneering technology
MAGIS-100 is an ‘atom interferometry’ experiment that will be mounted in a vertical access shaft at Fermilab. Scientists will cool strontium atoms to close to absolute zero temperature and reduce them down a 100-meter-long vacuum tube where they can go through laser light that will cause them to move at two different velocities simultaneously.
The team will then measure and compare signals from the atoms to observe things such as atomic superpositions and deviations that could be caused by elusive dark-matter particles that interact with the atoms.
Researchers hope that the study will also lay the foundation for future gravitational wave detectors and research by new advanced sensor technology.
AION collaborators are working with US universities to develop many optics components for MAGIS-100. They are providing the cameras that will record interference forms of fluorescent light produced by strontium atoms hit by laser light as well as critical optical mechanisms and data systems. They will also take part in the commissioning and data analysis of the experiment.
Fermilab’s MAGIS-100 collaborators, with their know-how and experience in constructing, running, and planning large-scale experiments, are working with AION agents to scale up cold-atom interferometry, which started as small,university-based experiments.
Mark Thomson, Executive Chair of STFC, said that this initiative is an exciting chance, both for the US and the UK, to collaborate in new technologies for fundamental science. There is huge potential in applying quantum technologies to our scientific mission to reveal the secrets of the universe.
MAGIS-100, in performance with a planned interferometer in the UK, will permit us to explore parts of physics that no technology can presently see.
