A technique for cooling a paramagnetic salt, such as potassium chrome alum, to a temperature near absolute zero. The salt is placed between the poles of an electromagnet and the heat produced during magnetization is removed by liquid helium. The salt is then isolated thermally from the surroundings and the field is switched off; the
adiabatic approximation An approximation used in quantum mechanics when the time dependence of parameters, such as the internuclear distance between atoms in a molecule, is slowly varying. This approximation means that the solution of the Schrodinger equation at one time goes continuously over to the solution at a later time. It was formulated by Max