Single Photon Atomic Sorting: Isotope Separation with Maxwell's Demon

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel isotope separation method using a single photon-induced change in atomic properties, enabling efficient large-scale separation with existing technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a new isotope separation technique based on single-photon interactions that reduces entropy and guides atoms, demonstrating broad applicability and scalability.

Findings

Simulations show effective isotope separation for various elements.

Efficiency limited only by available laser power.

Potential for large-scale, cost-effective isotope separation.

Abstract

Isotope separation is one of the grand challenges of modern society and holds great potential for basic science, medicine, energy, and defense. We consider here a new and general approach to isotope separation. The method is based on an irreversible change of the mass-to-magnetic moment ratio of a particular isotope in an atomic beam, followed by a magnetic multipole whose gradients deflect and guide the atoms. The underlying mechanism is a reduction of the entropy of the beam by the information of a single-scattered photon for each atom that is separated. We numerically simulate isotope separation for a range of examples, including lithium, for which we describe the experimental setup we are currently constructing. Simulations of other examples demonstrate this technique's general applicability to almost the entire periodic table. We show that the efficiency of the process is only limited by the available laser power, since one photon on average enables the separation of one atom. The practical importance of the proposed method is that large-scale isotope separation should be possible, using ordinary inexpensive magnets and the existing technologies of supersonic beams and lasers.