atomic physics – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants Change https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-first-nuclear-clock-will-test-if-fundamental-constants-change-20240904/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-first-nuclear-clock-will-test-if-fundamental-constants-change-20240904/#respond Wed, 04 Sep 2024 15:02:43 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=140311 The post The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants Change first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> At 11:30 one night in May 2024, a graduate student, Chuankun Zhang, saw a signal that physicists have sought for 50 years. As a peak rose from the static on his monitor at the research institute JILA in Boulder, Colorado, Zhang dropped a screenshot in a group chat with his three lab mates. One by one they hopped out of bed and trickled in. After several sanity checks to make sure that what they...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-first-nuclear-clock-will-test-if-fundamental-constants-change-20240904/feed/ 0 He Seeks Mystery Magnetic Fields With His Quantum Compass https://www.quantamagazine.org/he-seeks-mystery-magnetic-fields-with-his-quantum-compass-20240517/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/he-seeks-mystery-magnetic-fields-with-his-quantum-compass-20240517/#respond Fri, 17 May 2024 14:03:34 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=137981 The post He Seeks Mystery Magnetic Fields With His Quantum Compass first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Atomic physicists “are jacks of all trades,” according to Alex Sushkov. “You have to have the idea, design the experiment, build the experiment, run the experiment, fix everything, take data, analyze data, write up the paper. You do everything,” and that “suits my personality.” In his lab at Boston University, the Russian-born Australian is supercharging a 50-year-old tool for new purposes.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/he-seeks-mystery-magnetic-fields-with-his-quantum-compass-20240517/feed/ 0 The Best Qubits for Quantum Computing Might Just Be Atoms https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-best-qubits-for-quantum-computing-might-just-be-atoms-20240325/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-best-qubits-for-quantum-computing-might-just-be-atoms-20240325/#respond Mon, 25 Mar 2024 14:55:21 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=136500 The post The Best Qubits for Quantum Computing Might Just Be Atoms first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> At the end of last year, the tech giant IBM announced what might sound like a milestone in quantum computing: the first-ever chip, called the Condor, with more than 1,000 quantum bits, or qubits. Given that this was barely two years after the company unveiled the Eagle, the first chip with more than 100 qubits, it looked as though the field was racing forward. Making quantum computers that can...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-best-qubits-for-quantum-computing-might-just-be-atoms-20240325/feed/ 0 The (Often) Overlooked Experiment That Revealed the Quantum World https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-often-overlooked-experiment-that-revealed-the-quantum-world-20231205/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-often-overlooked-experiment-that-revealed-the-quantum-world-20231205/#respond Tue, 05 Dec 2023 15:33:08 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=132891 The post The (Often) Overlooked Experiment That Revealed the Quantum World first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Before Erwin Schrödinger’s cat was simultaneously dead and alive, and before pointlike electrons washed like waves through thin slits, a somewhat lesser-known experiment lifted the veil on the bewildering beauty of the quantum world. In 1922, the German physicists Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach demonstrated that the behavior of atoms was governed by rules that defied expectations — an observation...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-often-overlooked-experiment-that-revealed-the-quantum-world-20231205/feed/ 0 A New Experiment Casts Doubt on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-experiment-casts-doubt-on-the-leading-theory-of-the-nucleus-20230612/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-experiment-casts-doubt-on-the-leading-theory-of-the-nucleus-20230612/#respond Mon, 12 Jun 2023 14:00:10 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=126732 The post A New Experiment Casts Doubt on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> A new measurement of the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, confirms previous hints of an uncomfortable truth: We still don’t have a solid theoretical grasp of even the simplest nuclear systems. To test the strong nuclear force, physicists turned to the helium-4 nucleus, which has two protons and two neutrons. When helium nuclei are excited, they grow like an...

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