Amazing!http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57385/title/Physicists_observe_quantum_properties_in_the_world_of_objects"
Potential applications, he says, include using arrays of these resonators to control multiple quantum systems in information processing or to test predictions about “Schrödinger cat” states — named for a hypothetical feline simultaneously alive and dead — in which a system exists in a mix of states known as a superposition. Cleland’s team showed, somewhat indirectly, that a form of superposition existed inside their resonator. If the researchers could make a resonator with longer-lasting vibrations, scientists might be able to test superposition on the macroscopic scale.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/57383/name/Quantum_object.jpg
After thinking about it some more, I realized you need the temperature low enough that the oscillator is in the ground state the vast majority of time. This requires kT much smaller than the energy spacing, so the Boltzmann factorf95toli said:Well, you need low temperatures because you need to remove all high energy excitation and put the NEMS resonator (and the qubit) into its ground state before you start maniupulating it; remember that temperature is the same thing as vibrations (meaning lots of high energy phonons) in this case.
Thanks for the added remarks.Also, I susect the 50 uK comes from the paper, in the introduction they calculate the energy for a low frequency resonators as well the as the one the actually used; basically to exaplain why they used a 6 GHz resonator as opposed to a e.g. a 10 kHz resonator.
It might be worth pointing out that there are systems that can reach 50 uK (dilution fridges with adiabatic demagnetization stages) so it is possible that someone will eventually be able to repeat the same experiment using a resonator with much lower eigenfrequency (although you can't make it too low, this type of qubit can realistially only be operated down to a few hundred MHz)