Correspondence Artikel in Nature published to honor the 50th birthday of the ultracold neutrons

To honor this occasion, a famous birthday song has been composed again, using ultracold neutrons in a gravitational field.

Die Frequenzen, mit denen der Geburtstagssong neu komponiert wurde, hängen nur von der Neutronenmasse, der Erdbeschleunigung und dem Planck'schen Wirkungsquantum ab.

© Atominstitut

The frequencies used to recreate the birthday song only depend on the neutron mass, the acceleration of gravity and the Planck constant

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first production of ultracold neutrons. They were actually discovered twice at nearly the same time during the cold war, in Dubna in the USSR and in Munich in the western world.

The research group Neutron and Quantum Physics of the Atominstitut wants to commemorate this event with the recreation of the famous birthday song "Happy Birthday to you", which was composed again, using only the acoustic transitions of the qBounce experiment. The frequencies used in this song are only dependant on the mass of the neutron, the acceleration of gravity and the Planck constant.

If the song is played next to a neutron, trapped in the gravitational potential of the earth, the associated Neutron density distributions change accordingly to the music.

The correspondence article in Nature can be found here, opens an external URL in a new window. For listening to the birthday song, a new subpage was created, where the song can be found as a video and audio file, it can be found here, opens an external URL.