Direct Observations and Measurements of Single Atoms

• Natascha Hedrich ^[1] ; Ilia Sergachev ^[1] ; Jonathan Home ^[1] ; Andreas Lichtenberger ^[2]
  1. [1] Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich

     Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich

     Zürich, Suiza

     
  2. [2] ETH Zurich, Laboratory for Solid State Physics, Zurich, Switzerland
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 62, Nº. 6, 2024, págs. 443-445
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • While the existence of atoms was postulated long ago, and verified in experiments over a century ago, up until the early 1960s, the focus in atomic and molecular physics was primarily on understanding the invisible world of atoms through indirect measurements. The last half-century has seen a radical change, in which scientists have gained control on the single-atom level, opening an enormous number of applications from atomic clocks to quantum computers. However, in the classroom, typical “modern” physics experiments to show students the existence of atoms and their excited states, e.g., Franck–Hertz, spectral lines, etc., are already more than 100 years old.1,2 While these are crucial parts of the history of atomic physics, none of these experiments allow students to truly see and experience atoms in isolation, as is now common in research labs. Unfortunately, due to the large costs and high level of expertise involved in atomic experiments, state-of-the-art physics experiments have remained largely outside the reach of the classroom. In recent years, there have been excellent programs to bring techniques such as scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy to classrooms,3 but we take this one step further to allow, for the first time, a broad public to interact with and directly observe the quantum states of single atoms.