A rubber band is stretched, and suddenly snaps. In the atomic world, a similar picture emerges: the string binding particles can break. In a new study, physicists took a chain of Rydberg atoms and tracked how such a string breaks.
Under weak tension, the string breaks completely, and the system splits into several independent pieces, as if a rubber band shattered into segments. But under strong tension, it's different: the string breaks at only one point, and then the broken ends fuse back together. This cycle of breaking and healing repeats many times.
Quantum fluctuations (random oscillations) amplify this effect: the system's wave function gains more states with two separate strings, but the overall dynamics remain unchanged. This paves the way for simulating complex phenomena from particle physics using simple atomic systems.
Rydberg atoms are atoms with a very large size: their outer electron is far from the nucleus, so the atoms interact strongly with each other.
In the series 'Dark', the breaks and reconnections of timelines resemble the behavior of the quantum string from this work.