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The team measured the orientation of the atoms' spins after they completed their journey and compared the result to their initial orientations. They found that the atoms' spins didn't return to where they started, a discrepancy that can arise during a trip through curved space. In this case, the size and direction of the deflection matched predictions for the curvature created by a Yang monopole.
To test that the deflections were indeed due to the monopole and not another source, researchers sent the atoms on a different journey, one that attempted to avoid the space-bending singularity created by the monopole. On this new path, the atoms no longer felt an overall tug from the curvature, a strong indication that they had exited the monopole's realm of influence.
Turning the monopole's effects on and off depends only on the big-picture shape of the paths that the atoms take and not on any small wiggles along the way—an indication that the effect is topological. The paths either enclose a monopole or they don't, and this provides a topological feature that could lead to new types of quantum charge pumps, Spielman says.
Now, a team at JQI led by postdoctoral researcher Seiji Sugawa and JQI Fellow Ian Spielman have succeeded in emulating a Yang monopole with an ultracold gas of rubidium atoms. The result, which provides another example of using cold quantum gases to simulate other areas of physics, was reported in the June 29 issue of Science.
The effects of a monopole were simulated, intentionally. A Yang monople is a topological construct. A zero dimensional object. Not a real thing.
The experiment was not about the existence of monopoles, but about other implications of the Yang monopole.
They found that the atoms' spins didn't return to where they started, a discrepancy that can arise during a trip through curved space. In this case, the size and direction of the deflection matched predictions for the curvature created by a Yang monopole.
The reason this story is important is that the path-bending properties of this monopole are not just mathematical inference. It's a physical effect that has been detected which is experimental evidence of a monopole at work.
It's a physical effect that has been detected which is experimental evidence of a monopole at work
Did you know that the physics at CERN being done every day is a simulation based on experimental data?
I made no such assertion. As I said in my first post "To be clear...", I was offering clarification because you did not mention that this was a simulation in your OP.
Nowhere in my post did I assert that a magnetic monopole was physically discovered. YOU asserted that I did.
I was offering clarification because you did not mention that this was a simulation in your OP.
I'm not going to pretend I completely understand it but it is clear that no monopoles were harmed, or created.
originally posted by: ZeussusZ
I had a magnet at home one time. I cut in in half so I would have a monopole. No just ended up with two magnets. Monopoles are not real things