We recently constructed the first "cat optical trap," a longwave incoherent 1-D version of the laser cooled adiabatic ion trap.
Obtain a long spring-arm desklamp, lift it 10" high and aim its emitter downwards, and place a bath towel just below it (cellulose preferred over artificial fibers, aged fabric required.) Apply power, and after a brief delay the space between the incoherent source and the cellulose absorber will fill with large purring entities extracted from the Dirac background. Remove power, and their number decays far more slowly than the time- constant associated with their appearance, perhaps giving evidence of a short-range attraction force. On successive operations the time constant of population growth diminishes to a limit: a strange form of hysteresis. Chaotic feline trajectories are observed in multi-particle populations in the trap, analogous to those of ion crystals during optical trapping in vacuum conditions. We see evidence that our trap was accidentally optimized for 720T and 1G acceleration field, but further testing has yet to be performed. (((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) ))))))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 206-762-3818 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
