11–20 of 229 posts
> If the wavelength of the laser is chosen exactly right ... then maybe a special atomic nucleus could be manipulated with a laser, namely thorium-229. On November 21, 2023, the team was finally successful: the correct energy of the thorium transition was hit exactly, the thorium nuclei delivered a clear signal for the first time. So what's the wavelength? I felt like the article left me hanging. The answer is: 148.3…
What does "exciting a nucleus" mean?
Now in this case they use lasers. I suspect if you choose the right wavelenght (=frequency) of light there is some sort of resonance phenomenom.
What does "exciting a nucleus" mean?
> This nucleus has two very closely adjacent energy states – so closely adjacent that a laser should in principle be sufficient to change the state of the atomic nucleus.
> the correct energy of the thorium transition was hit exactly, the thorium nuclei delivered a clear signal for the first time. The laser beam had actually switched their state.
I don't know enough to explain any further.
What does "exciting a nucleus" mean?
What does "exciting a nucleus" mean?
The laser is used to transition the nucleus from the ground state to the excited isometric state.
> If the wavelength of the laser is chosen exactly right ... then maybe a special atomic nucleus could be manipulated with a laser, namely thorium-229. On November 21, 2023, the team was finally successful: the correct energy of the thorium transition was hit exactly, the thorium nuclei delivered a clear signal for the first time. So what's the wavelength? I felt like the article left me hanging. The answer is: 148.3…
More seriously, apparently it takes a photon with a wavelength of 92nm to eject an electron from a hydrogen atom. Maybe this is a reasonable reference/refresher: https://web.archive.org/web/20210413042937/https://www.nagwa...
What does "exciting a nucleus" mean?
The details of how the nucleus manifests that extra energy are complicated, but you can imagine it as like, picking up a certain vibrational frequency.
> This makes it possible to combine two areas of physics that previously had little to do with each other: classical quantum physics and nuclear physics. Is quantum physics now considered part of classical physics? If so then man, time flies!
Are today's atomic clocks really so imprecise? Without further explanation of this, it reminds me of this comic (which is alas showing its age both by mentioning flash, and by implying that 1024 is already a uselessly high number of cpus to support):