{"id":227039,"date":"2025-12-13T05:13:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T11:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/how-bose-einstein-condensates-replicate-shapiro-steps"},"modified":"2025-12-13T05:13:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T11:13:04","slug":"how-bose-einstein-condensates-replicate-shapiro-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/how-bose-einstein-condensates-replicate-shapiro-steps","title":{"rendered":"How Bose-Einstein condensates replicate Shapiro steps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-bose-einstein-condensates-replicate-shapiro-steps2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The microscopic processes taking place in superconductors are difficult to observe directly. Researchers at the RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau have therefore implemented a quantum simulation of the Josephson effect: They separated two Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) by means of an extremely thin optical barrier.<\/p>\n<p>The characteristic Shapiro steps were observed in the atomic system. The research was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.ads9061\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Science.<\/p>\n<p>Two superconductors separated by a wafer-thin insulating layer\u2014that\u2019s how simple a Josephson junction looks. But despite its simple structure, it harbors a quantum mechanical effect that is now one of the most important tools of modern technology: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-03-quantum-mechanical-molecules-superconducting-devices.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">Josephson contacts<\/a> form the heart of many quantum computers and enable high-precision measurements\u2014such as the measurement of very weak magnetic fields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The microscopic processes taking place in superconductors are difficult to observe directly. Researchers at the RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau have therefore implemented a quantum simulation of the Josephson effect: They separated two Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) by means of an extremely thin optical barrier. The characteristic Shapiro steps were observed in the atomic system. The research [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}