"Anomalous cooling" is a neglected subject with a contentious history
since it implies that anomalous positive energy is available elsewhere
in the system in which the cooling is seem. One does not expect to see
600 volts pulsing through a large copper coil at the same time its
temperature drops below ambient, unless there is a corresponding
opposing effect of some kind to balance it out. It is the balancing
which is contentious.
There is a well-known magnetocaloric effect (BTW this was discovered
with nickel), but the thermodynamics are completely explained in the
case of magnetocalorics. In fact, there seem to have been a number of
cooling anomalies in years past which were somewhat tainted by the
reputation of the inventor, no matter how convincing the experiment and
that is the case of Naudin's experiment below. Here is the experiment
which was performed well and has been replicated by several others. It
makes no claim for excess net energy. You may remember this one from
almost 20 years back.
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/NMac0709.htm
Anyway - all of the above rambling is a preface to the new study from
NIST which could add a level of understanding of some alternative energy
and LERN experiments past and present.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v541/n7636/full/nature20604.html
"Sideband cooling beyond the quantum backaction limit with squeezed
light" Jeremy B. Clark, et al NIST
Nature 541,191–195 (12 January 2017)
Quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic vacuum produce measurable
physical effects such as Casimir forces and the Lamb shift1. They also
impose an observable limit—known as the quantum backaction limit—on the
lowest temperatures that can be reached using conventional laser cooling
techniques2, 3. As laser cooling experiments continue to bring massive
mechanical systems to unprecedentedly low temperatures4, 5, this
seemingly fundamental limit is increasingly important in the laboratory.
Fortunately, vacuum fluctuations are not immutable and can be
‘squeezed’, reducing amplitude fluctuations at the expense of phase
fluctuations. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate that
squeezed light can be used to cool the motion of a macroscopic
mechanical object below the quantum backaction limit. We first cool a
microwave cavity optomechanical system using a coherent state of light
to within 15 per cent of this limit. We then cool the system to more
than two decibels below the quantum backaction limit using a squeezed
microwave field generated by a Josephson parametric amplifier. From
heterodyne spectroscopy of the mechanical sidebands, we measure a
minimum thermal occupancy of 0.19 ± 0.01 phonons. With our technique,
even low-frequency mechanical oscillators can in principle be cooled
arbitrarily close to the motional ground state, enabling the exploration
of quantum physics in larger, more massive systems.
