In atomic theory and quantum mechanics, an atomic orbital is a function describing the location and wave-like behavior of an electron in an atom. This function can be used to calculate the probability of finding any electron of an atom in any specific region around the atom's nucleus. The term atomic orbital may also refer to the physical region or space where the electron can be calculated to be present, as predicted by the particular mathematical form of the orbital.
Diffraction is the interference or bending of waves around the corners of an obstacle or through an aperture into the region of geometrical shadow of the obstacle/aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a secondary source of the propagating wave. Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi coined the word diffraction and was the first to record accurate observations of the phenomenon in 1660.
The Fresnel equations describe the reflection and transmission of light when incident on an interface between different optical media. They were deduced by French engineer and physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel who was the first to understand that light is a transverse wave, even though no one realized that the "vibrations" of the wave were electric and magnetic fields. For the first time, polarization could be understood quantitatively, as Fresnel's equations correctly predicted the differing behaviour of waves of the s and p polarizations incident upon a material interface.
A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element hydrogen. The electrically neutral atom contains a single positively charged proton and a single negatively charged electron bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force. Atomic hydrogen constitutes about 75% of the baryonic mass of the universe.
In physics and chemistry, Bragg's law, Wulff–Bragg's condition or Laue–Bragg interference, a special case of Laue diffraction, gives the angles for coherent scattering of waves from a large crystal lattice. It encompasses the superposition of wave fronts scattered by lattice planes, leading to a strict relation between wavelength and scattering angle, or else to the wavevector transfer with respect to the crystal lattice. Such law had initially been formulated for X-rays upon crystals. However, it applies to all sorts of quantum beams, including neutron and electron waves at atomic distances if there are a large number of atoms, as well as visible light with artificial periodic microscale lattices.
The quantum Zeno effect is a feature of quantum-mechanical systems allowing a particle's time evolution to be slowed down by measuring it frequently enough with respect to some chosen measurement setting.
Specular reflection, or regular reflection, is the mirror-like reflection of waves, such as light, from a surface.
In optics, the Fresnel diffraction equation for near-field diffraction is an approximation of the Kirchhoff–Fresnel diffraction that can be applied to the propagation of waves in the near field. It is used to calculate the diffraction pattern created by waves passing through an aperture or around an object, when viewed from relatively close to the object. In contrast the diffraction pattern in the far field region is given by the Fraunhofer diffraction equation.
X-ray reflectivity is a surface-sensitive analytical technique used in chemistry, physics, and materials science to characterize surfaces, thin films and multilayers. It is a form of reflectometry based on the use of X-rays and is related to the techniques of neutron reflectometry and ellipsometry.
Quantum metrology is the study of making high-resolution and highly sensitive measurements of physical parameters using quantum theory to describe the physical systems, particularly exploiting quantum entanglement and quantum squeezing. This field promises to develop measurement techniques that give better precision than the same measurement performed in a classical framework. Together with quantum hypothesis testing, it represents an important theoretical model at the basis of quantum sensing.
In physics, an atomic mirror is a device which reflects neutral atoms in a way similar to the way a conventional mirror reflects visible light. Atomic mirrors can be made of electric fields or magnetic fields, electromagnetic waves or just silicon wafer; in the last case, atoms are reflected by the attracting tails of the van der Waals attraction. Such reflection is efficient when the normal component of the wavenumber of the atoms is small or comparable to the effective depth of the attraction potential. To reduce the normal component, most atomic mirrors are blazed at the grazing incidence.
Quantum reflection is a uniquely quantum phenomenon in which an object, such as a neutron or a small molecule, reflects smoothly and in a wavelike fashion from a much larger surface, such as a pool of mercury. A classically behaving neutron or molecule will strike the same surface much like a thrown ball, hitting only at one atomic-scale location where it is either absorbed or scattered. Quantum reflection provides a powerful experimental demonstration of particle-wave duality, since it is the extended quantum wave packet of the particle, rather than the particle itself, that reflects from the larger surface. It is similar to reflection high-energy electron diffraction, where electrons reflect and diffraction from surfaces, and grazing incidence atom scattering, where the fact that atoms can also be waves is used to diffract from surfaces.
Atom optics "refers to techniques to manipulate the trajectories and exploit the wave properties of neutral atoms". Typical experiments employ beams of cold, slowly moving neutral atoms, as a special case of a particle beam. Like an optical beam, the atomic beam may exhibit diffraction and interference, and can be focused with a Fresnel zone plate or a concave atomic mirror.
The Gross–Pitaevskii equation describes the ground state of a quantum system of identical bosons using the Hartree–Fock approximation and the pseudopotential interaction model.
The Goos–Hänchen effect (named after Hermann Fritz Gustav Goos and Hilda Hänchen is an optical phenomenon in which linearly polarized light undergoes a small lateral shift when totally internally reflected. The shift is perpendicular to the direction of propagation in the plane containing the incident and reflected beams. This effect is the linear polarization analog of the Imbert–Fedorov effect.
The Institute for Laser Science is a department of the University of Electro Communications, located near Tokyo, Japan.
Interferometric microscopy or imaging interferometric microscopy is the concept of microscopy which is related to holography, synthetic-aperture imaging, and off-axis-dark-field illumination techniques. Interferometric microscopy allows enhancement of resolution of optical microscopy due to interferometric (holographic) registration of several partial images and the numerical combining.
A hydrogen-like atom (or hydrogenic atom) is any atom or ion with a single valence electron. These atoms are isoelectronic with hydrogen. Examples of hydrogen-like atoms include, but are not limited to, hydrogen itself, all alkali metals such as Rb and Cs, singly ionized alkaline earth metals such as Ca+ and Sr+ and other ions such as He+, Li2+, and Be3+ and isotopes of any of the above. A hydrogen-like atom includes a positively charged core consisting of the atomic nucleus and any core electrons as well as a single valence electron. Because helium is common in the universe, the spectroscopy of singly ionized helium is important in EUV astronomy, for example, of DO white dwarf stars.
The kicked rotator, also spelled as kicked rotor, is a paradigmatic model for both Hamiltonian chaos and quantum chaos. It describes a free rotating stick in an inhomogeneous "gravitation like" field that is periodically switched on in short pulses. The model is described by the Hamiltonian
The trigonometric Rosen–Morse potential, named after the physicists Nathan Rosen and Philip M. Morse, is among the exactly solvable quantum mechanical potentials.
