This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Table tennis professionals are true masters at redirecting fast-moving projectiles. Putting a targeted spin on a serve can make the little white ball fly straight toward the edge of the table but then, at the last moment, take a sharp curve into the left corner.
The physical phenomenon behind this sporting trick is known as the Magnus effect. It acts on balls of all sizes and has helped decide more than a few soccer matches. An international research collaboration at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI has now taken the leap from ball to atom, experimentally demonstrating the so-called optical Magnus effect for the first time.
In this case, however, there is no atom flying along a curved trajectory. Instead, the researchers direct a tightly focused laser beam at a single ion and observe the resulting interaction. They were able to show that the point of maximum interaction is shifted sideways—an important finding for the development of quantum computers in which laser light is used to precisely control qubits.
The researchers report their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters. With a tightly focused laser beam directed at an ion, one would expect the strongest interaction to occur where the laser beam is most intense: at its center. However, tightly focusing the laser also changes the spatial structure of its electromagnetic field.
As a result, the interaction with the ion is strongest not exactly at the center of the laser beam, but slightly to one side. This sideways shift is the optical counterpart of the Magnus effect seen in the flight of a table tennis ball. And just as an unexpected deviation in sports can mean losing the ball, in quantum computers it can mean the loss of control.
There, laser light is used to selectively change the state of qubits. The optical Magnus effect could interfere with this precise control and contribute to errors if it is not taken into account. At the same time, the effect also presents an opportunity.
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