🚀 go-pugleaf

(This has nothing much to do with nanotechnology, but I'm
posting the followup here because the original message was here.)

This laser-cooling scheme sounds interesting, especially if
they can produce Bose-condensed collections of atoms and/or ions.

The rate of a transition that puts a boson into a state already
occupied by n identical bosons is multiplied by a factor of (n+1).
For example, the rate of decay of an electronically excited atom in a
laser amplifier can be much faster than its rate of spontaneous
emission.

Similarly, radioactive decay should also be accelerated by this effect
if the decayed atom were to be added to an already large
bose-condensed collection of identical atoms or ions.  This is true
even for non-electromagnetic decays, since there is nothing that says
the boson must be a photon.

One would have to arrange it so that the addition of the decayed atom
to the bose-condensed state is allowed kinematically; i.e., recoil
would have to be countered or the decay would have to involve two or
more particles (for example, beta decay with the electron and neutrino
emitted with equal but opposite momenta).  This is a serious problem,
since the energy of the bose-condensed atoms will be extremely small,
on the order 10^-10 eV or less.  That will lead to a very large
reduction in the rate of the transition, since most decays would send
the decayed atom into some other state.  However, "n" is potentially
very large.

It would be interesting indeed if a practical means could be found to
accelerate radioactive decay.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu