Will Supercold Atoms Change the World? New 8C Incubator Tenant Bets Yes

The News: Nobel prize-winning research on ultracold atoms will take quantum leaps toward commercialization thanks to the 8th Continent Project’s incubator support of a Boulder venture, ColdQuanta, whose technology allows faster and less expensive production of an entirely new form of frictionless matter.

ColdQuanta President Rainer Kunz shows off RuBECi. Photo courtesy of ColoBiz magazine.

The Space 2.0 connection: Bose-Einstein condensate — atoms that when cooled to millionths of a degree above absolute zero, behave like a single atom –is an idea just now being brought down to earth.

Lasers were invented in the late 1950s, opening up a new domain of technology, but it took decades for the technology to move from the lab to household CD players, ColdQuanta CTO Dana Anderson told W3W3 Internet Radio.

Anderson explains: “Ultracold atoms are to normal atoms what lasers are to light.”

The condensate was first proposed by Satyendranath Bose and Albert Einstein in the 1920s and first produced from the element rubidium by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in a CU  lab in 1995. Their work won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics.

ColdQuanta, a University of Colorado startup company, developed a device called RuBECi to produce such ultracold atoms. What used to require a lab full of expensive equipment can now be produced with a device that fits in a carry-on bag.

ColdQuanta President Rainer Kunz told ColoBiz that using the RuBECi to produce small quantities of condensate will cut preproduction time in half, allowing researchers to explore how this new form of matter could change such industries as instrumentation, health care and remote sensing.

ColdQuanta is the second company to participate in the 8th Continent Project Aerospace Business Incubator, part of the Boulder Innovation Center.

From the announcement:

“When atoms are cooled to just above absolute zero degrees Kelvin (-460 °F), a state of frictionless matter known as Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) is created that can be used to dramatically increase the performance of devices such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, gravimeters and magnetometers,” said ColdQuanta President Rainer Kunz. “Ultracold atoms have disruptive implications for industrial applications ranging from spacecraft and submarine navigation, to geology and healthcare.”

Research is in full swing at dozens of world-class laboratories to deliver BEC breakthroughs. ColdQuanta’s founders – Mr. Kunz, Professors Dana Anderson, Jakob Reichel and Nobel Laureate Ted Hänsch – created ColdQuanta to commercialize ultracold and BEC devices that will facilitate the production of BEC and development of applications. The first device released by the company, the RuBECi™ developed by Dr. Anderson and his team, cuts researchers’ time and costs by more than half when producing BEC. Two of the RuBECi™ Ultracold Matter Cells have been sold already, one to a federal research lab and the other to the University of Rochester, one of the world’s leading centers for optical research.

The sky’s the limit on potential applications for this new form of matter, and that’s why ColdQuanta is a perfect tenant for the 8th Continent Incubator.