First Ever Realtime Lightshow of Krypton Atom Electrons

[n2doc]

An international team of scientists led by groups from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) and from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has used ultrashort flashes of laser light to directly observe the movement of an atom's outer electrons for the first time.

A classical diagram of a krypton atom above shows its 36 electrons arranged in shells. Researchers have measured oscillations of quantum states (foreground) in the outer orbitals of an ionized krypton atom, oscillations that drive electron motion.

Through a process called attosecond absorption spectroscopy, researchers were able to time the oscillations between simultaneously produced quantum states of valence electrons with great precision. These oscillations drive electron motion.


"With a simple system of krypton atoms, we demonstrated, for the first time, that we can measure transient absorption dynamics with attosecond pulses," says Stephen Leone of Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division, who is also a professor of chemistry and physics at UC Berkeley. "This revealed details of a type of electronic motion - coherent superposition - that can control properties in many systems."


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http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/08/-first-ever-realtime-lightshow-of-krypton-atom-electrons-.html#more

[Orsino]

1. I think Heisenberg would dig this...

...but I can't be sure.

[formercia]

2. His potential reaction would be uncertain

Being dug up to see if he digs it, to me seems like an uncertain outcome.