Picture of a Single Atom
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Picture of a Single Atom
Saul
μ-stuff
μ-stuff
- rjlittlefield
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Fascinating!
Quoting from the article:
Of course we're talking here about detection, not resolution. They are completely different issues!
--Rik
Quoting from the article:
Shooting a single atom with that equipment, who would have guessed!?“The idea of being able to see a single atom with the naked eye had struck me as a wonderfully direct and visceral bridge between the miniscule quantum world and our macroscopic reality,” Nadlinger tells EPSRC. “A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed the numbers to be on my side, and when I set off to the lab with camera and tripods one quiet Sunday afternoon, I was rewarded with this particular picture of a small, pale blue dot.”
The photo was captured on August 7th, 2017, using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR, a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens, extension tubes, and two flash units with color gels.
Of course we're talking here about detection, not resolution. They are completely different issues!
--Rik
- MarkSturtevant
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Lets see if I understand it correctly: The atom was induced to emit photons after excitation, and this is I suppose resolved to a single pixel in the picture.
If that is about right, I think the atom is a lot smaller than the area of that pixel, but this way of showing its presence is pretty clever.
If that is about right, I think the atom is a lot smaller than the area of that pixel, but this way of showing its presence is pretty clever.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters
Dept. of Still Waters
- rjlittlefield
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It's an interesting question just how "static" the atom's position is in this apparatus.
As I understand the setup, the charged atom is held suspended by some sort of dynamic process that periodically compensates for drift from whatever cause. What's being imaged is actually the time-averaged ensemble of all those places that the atom was located when it emitted a photon. I would be surprised if the effective size of that ensemble is not hugely larger than the dimension of the atom itself.
--Rik
As I understand the setup, the charged atom is held suspended by some sort of dynamic process that periodically compensates for drift from whatever cause. What's being imaged is actually the time-averaged ensemble of all those places that the atom was located when it emitted a photon. I would be surprised if the effective size of that ensemble is not hugely larger than the dimension of the atom itself.
--Rik