2024-05-08 06:00:16
For the first time, physicists have managed to capture a clear picture showing individual atoms behaving like a wave. This discovery provides a striking demonstration of the principle of wave-particle duality, one of the foundations of quantum mechanics.
The researchers used a new image processing technique, which is still awaiting peer review, published on the preliminary arXiv server. They cooled lithium atoms to a temperature close to absolute zero by bombarding them with photons from a laser. This step aims to slow their movement. Then the atoms were confined in an optical lattice using additional lasers.
By alternating the activation and deactivation of this network, the atoms oscillated between a confined quasiparticle state and a wavelike state. This manipulation allowed scientists to observe the transformation of atoms and understand how they behave in waves over time.
According to Louis de Broglie and Erwin Schrödinger, the pioneers of this concept in 1924 and 1926 respectively, all quantum-sized objects, and therefore all matter on a very small scale, exist simultaneously in the form of particles and waves. This counterintuitive property of quantum mechanics has been observed in a number of experiments until now indirectly.
By combining several of these images, the authors were able to observe the atoms behaving like waves.
Credit: Verstraten et al.
The microscope used in this study captures the light emitted by the atoms, so that changes in their state can be visualized. This imaging technique can accelerate our understanding of complex atomic systems and shed light on certain exotic states of matter, such as those found in the cores of neutron stars or quark-gluon plasma, which are thought to have existed shortly following the Big Bang.
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