Giant, Heavy and Hollow: Physicists Create Extreme Atoms

Giant, Heavy and Hollow: Physicists Create Extreme Atoms: “If you tune your X-rays properly, you can pick which shell you want to empty out first,” says Young. “Being able to control the inner-shell dynamics is very cool.” The current record for this kind of atom-hollowing was reported last November by a group at the Center for Free-electron Laser Science in Hamburg, Germany, which used the SLAC laser to strip away, from the inside out, the 36 inner electrons of a 54-electron-strong xenon atom...

In 2008, researchers led by Dunning reported that they had managed to squeeze the normally spread-out electron into a tight packet that briefly orbited the nucleus. Last year, they added radio waves that enabled that motion to be maintained indefinitely. “It only took a century, but we recreated Bohr's atom,” says Dunning proudly...

By 2002, two collaborations had been able to make as many as 50,000 atoms of antihydrogen, but the atoms quickly annihilated on the walls of their container. It took until 2010 before researchers at ALPHA showed how to trap the atoms using three magnets with a combined field sufficient to restrain antihydrogen, with its tiny magnetic moment. At that time, the antimatter was held for just 170 milliseconds, and only about one atom was trapped for every eight times the group ran the 20–30 minute experiment, says Hangst. But the team has improved its equipment to trap one atom per experiment, and hold it for about 1,000 seconds...

New method to understand superconductors

New method to understand superconductors: ...describe a new method to understand the cooling of atoms, which is to simulate a superconductor using a "quantum simulator" (a kind of bespoke quantum computer for examining specific problems) rather than a supercomputer.



The researchers found that just such a simulator can be built to examine atoms cooled to just a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The atoms are controlled using laser beams which enhance the electrical forces between the atoms, which are usually weak and unimportant. These forces mimic the physics of the superconductor, and the proposed simulator includes far more physical detail than ever before.

Using laser beams, scientists generate quantum matter with novel, crystal-like properties

Using laser beams, scientists generate quantum matter with novel, crystal-like properties:  As the scientists chose Rydberg-states which give rise to repulsive van der Waals forces the excited atoms have to keep a minimum distance of several micrometers from each other. This mutual blockade leads to spatial correlations between the atoms such that, depending on the number of Rydberg-atoms, states with different geometrical configurations can emerge (see fig. 1). "However, we have to be aware that in our excited quantum system all geometrical orders are present at the same time. To be precise, all the excitation states form a coherent superposition, " Dr. Marc Cheneau says, a scientist at the experiment. "This new state of matter is a very fragile, crystal-like formation; it exists as long as the excitation is sustained, and fades away once the beam is switched off."

A Giant Proposal For A New Type Of Molecule - Science News

A Giant Proposal For A New Type Of Molecule - Science News: "In this way, the giant atom and the small molecule would form a Rydberg molecule with a completely new type of chemical bond, the researchers predict. “When you talk about chemistry, you talk about bonds,” Rittenhouse says. “This type of bond is new.”"

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | World first for strange molecule

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | World first for strange molecule - "Known as a Rydberg molecule, it is formed through an elusive and extremely weak chemical bond between two atoms.

The new type of bonding, reported in Nature, occurs because one of the two atoms in the molecule has an electron very far from its nucleus or centre."