In which we do a little ResearchBlogging, taking a look at a slightly confusing paper putting a new twist on the double-slit experiment. ———— I’m off to California this afternoon, spending the rest of the week at DAMOP in Pasadena (not presenting this year, just hanging out to see the coolest new stuff in Atomic,… Continue reading Single Photons Are Still Photons: “Wave-particle dualism and complementarity unraveled by a different mode”
Tag: quantum physics
What’s So Interesting About Ultracold Matter?
The first of the five categories of active research at DAMOP that I described in yesterday’s post is “Ultracold Matter.” The starting point for this category of research is laser cooling to get a gas of atoms down to microkelvin temperatures (that is, a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero. Evaporative cooling can… Continue reading What’s So Interesting About Ultracold Matter?
Science, Statistics and the Supernatural
Josh Rosenau has a post about the supernatural, spinning off recent posts about a recent Calamities of Nature webcomic. Josh makes a point that I think is valid but subtle: The issue with the supernatural is not whether it’s part of the universe, but whether it is bound by the same laws as all the… Continue reading Science, Statistics and the Supernatural
Bouncing Neutrons for Fun and Science: “Realization of a gravity-resonance-spectroscopy technique”
Several people blogged about a new measurement of gravitational states of neutrons done by physicists using ultracold neutrons from the Institut Laue-Langevin in France. I had to resort to Twitter to get access to the paper (we don’t get Nature Physics here, and it’s way faster than Inter-Library Loan), but this is a nice topic… Continue reading Bouncing Neutrons for Fun and Science: “Realization of a gravity-resonance-spectroscopy technique”
Bunches and Antibunches of Atoms: Hanbury Brown and Twiss Effects in Ultracold Atoms
Two papers in one post this time out. One of these was brought to my attention by Joerg Heber, the other I was reminded of when checking some information for last week’s mathematical post on photons. They fit extremely well together though, and both relate to the photon correlation stuff I was talking about last… Continue reading Bunches and Antibunches of Atoms: Hanbury Brown and Twiss Effects in Ultracold Atoms
High Excitement in Review: “Quantum information with Rydberg atoms”
I’m a big fan of review articles. For those not in academic science, “review article” means a long (tens of pages) paper collecting together the important results of some field of science, and presenting an overview of the whole thing. These vary somewhat in just how specific they are– some deal with both experiment and… Continue reading High Excitement in Review: “Quantum information with Rydberg atoms”
What’s a Photon, and How Do We Know they Exist?
A reader emailed me with a few questions regarding How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, one of which is too good not to turn into a blog post: What is a photon from an experimental perspective?… Could you perhaps provide me with a reference that discusses some experiments and these definitional issues? The short… Continue reading What’s a Photon, and How Do We Know they Exist?
Reader Request: Quantum Complexity
There’s some good stuff in yesterday’s post asking what physics you’d like to read more about. I’m nursing a sore neck and shoulder, so I’ll only do one or two quick ones today, starting with James D. Miller in the first comment: 1) Is it true that our understanding of quantum physics comes from studying… Continue reading Reader Request: Quantum Complexity
Protons: Even Smaller Than We Thought
The big physics story at the moment is probably the new measurement of the size of the proton, which is reported in this Nature paper (which does not seem to be on the arxiv, alas). This is kind of a hybrid of nuclear and atomic physics, as it’s a spectroscopic measurement of a quasi-atom involving… Continue reading Protons: Even Smaller Than We Thought
Watching Individual Atoms Make a Phase Transition
A press release from Harvard caught my eye last week, announcing results from Markus Greiner’s group that were, according to the release, published in Science. The press release seems to have gotten the date wrong, though– the article didn’t appear in Science last week. It is, however, available on the arxiv, so you get the… Continue reading Watching Individual Atoms Make a Phase Transition