Ultracold Chemistry

Hutson, Jeremy M.

doi:10.1126/science.1186703

Ultracold Chemistry

Hutson, Jeremy M.

Authors

Professor Jeremy Hutson j.m.hutson@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Chemists usually study reactions at temperatures of tens or hundreds of kelvin, where reaction rates are averaged over many different energies and initial conditions for collision. But new techniques are now making it possible to produce molecules and trap them at temperatures within one-millionth of a degree of absolute zero. Here, all the thermal averaging is removed; the molecules occupy the lowest possible quantum translational states, and all their motions are completely controllable. On page 853 of this issue, Ospelkaus et al. (1) describe chemical reactions between molecules in this new regime and find that tiny changes, such as flipping the orientation of a single nuclear spin, can have profound consequences for how (and whether) chemical reactions occur.

Citation

Hutson, J. M. (2010). Ultracold Chemistry. Science, 327(5967), 788-789. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1186703

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Feb 1, 2010
Deposit Date	Jun 19, 2013
Publicly Available Date	Jul 10, 2013
Journal	Science
Print ISSN	0036-8075
Electronic ISSN	1095-9203
Publisher	American Association for the Advancement of Science
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	327
Issue	5967
Pages	788-789
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1186703

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Copyright Statement
This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science 327, 2010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1186703