Can I reply to my own posting?! J
Here's another recent article http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-exotic-ultracold-atoms.html with PDF here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4444 where they trap ultracold atoms in an optical lattice and then use a controllable (in direction and I assume magnitude) magnetic field, to help elucidate its affect on electrons. <begin excerpt> Charles Clark, co-director of the Joint Quantum Institute, and his co-authors at George Mason University, the University of Hamburg, Germany and the University of California, Riverside have studied what happens when ultracold highly magnetic atoms are held in an optical lattice and subjected to an external magnetic field, which can be steered in various directions. This field tugs on the atom-sized magnets and, along with the direction of the field itself, leave the atoms standing upright or pulled over on their sides at various inclinations described in the figure by the angles phi and theta. In this way, the researcher can tune the interaction-force on demand. <end excerpt> I wonder if they can do this with just a single atom, of any flavor? -Mark From: Mark Iverson-ZeroPoint [mailto:zeropo...@charter.net] Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2012 12:13 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: [Vo]:Strobe-light for atoms... cont'd They're getting closer to the atomic strobe-light, and the kind of experiments I want to see! ============ http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-scientists-lcls-photovoltaic-action.html <begin excerpt> Stop-action X-ray snapshots of a ferroelectric nanolayer showed that the height of its basic building block, called a unit cell, contracted in response to bright light and then rebounded to become even longer than it was to begin with. The entire in-and-out atomic-scale wiggle took just 10 trillionths of a second, yet it indicated the mechanisms responsible for the materials photovoltaic effect. "What we saw was unanticipated," Lindenberg said. "It was amazing to see such dramatic structural changes, which we showed were caused by light-induced electrical currents in the ferroelectric material." The telling X-ray images were taken at the X-ray Pump Probe instrument of SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), which hit the ferroelectric samples with a stunningly rapid one-two punch of violet laser light (40 quadrillionths of a second long) and X-rays (60 quadrillionths of a second long). The researchers analyzed information from thousands of images to determine the photovoltaic mechanism. <end excerpt> ============== About a year ago I posted some msgs discussing atoms/electrons/protons as a collection of coupled oscillators. It is a qualitative/geometric/physical model, not quantitative. yet. http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg42571.html http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg42581.html http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg47117.html In this posting, http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg51705.html I describe an experiment that I wanted to see, and the above PhysOrg article is getting close to achieving this. ------------ - Hold a single H atom in a fixture so that it is not physically touching anything else. This can be done in a vacuum chamber and using electric and/or magnetic fields to hold and position it. These fields would also likely orient the atom in a consistent way. - With the EXTREMELY fast strobe light (ultra-ultra short pulse laser), slowly tune the frequency of the strobe-light and eventually it will equal the frequency of oscillation of the electron, or a subharmonic of it, and you will have a very high resolution image of that electron. ***AND***, it will appear to be motionless. Anyone who has used a strobe-light to set the ignition timing on a car knows exactly what I'm talking about. - Now with the phase-delay knob on this strobe-light, we slowly adjust it and you will view what appears to be a slow-motion movie of the electron's movement. To use the car-timing analogy, turn the distributor slowly and the timing-mark on the flywheel slowly moves in one direction. According to my model, I would be willing to bet that one would see the electron move thru the nucleus with every oscillation. but it traverses the center region much more quickly than when it reaches the outer bounds of its oscillation where it has to slow down and reverse direction. I hope the scientists get this done before it's my time to go! =================== -Mark
