The image shows Lithium atoms cooled to near absolute zero appearing as red dots on the image. By combining several of these images, the authors were able to observe atoms behaving like waves. (Image credit: Verstraten et al.)

Amazing images show how atoms transform into quantum waves, just as predicted by Schrödinger

A new imaging technique that captures the transformation of frozen lithium atoms into quantum waves could be used to study some of the least understood aspects of the quantum world. For the first time ever, physicists have captured clear images of individual atoms behaving like waves. This image shows how the sharp red dot of a fluorescent atom transforms into a fuzzy mass of wave packets, brilliantly supporting one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics: the idea that atoms exist as both particles and waves. is showing. The scientists who invented this imaging technique published their results on the preprint server arXiv, so their work has not yet been peer-reviewed. “The wave nature of matter remains one of the most striking aspects of quantum mechanics,” the researchers wrote in their paper. They added that their new technique could be used to image more complex systems and provide insight into some fundamental questions in physics.

The wave-particle duality theorem was first proposed by French physicist Louis de Broglie in 1924 and extended two years later by Erwin Schrödinger. It states that all quantum-sized objects, and therefore all matter, exist simultaneously as particles and waves. Physicists commonly interpret Schrödinger’s famous equation to say that atoms exist in space as wave-like probability packets that decay into individual particles when observed. This strange property of the quantum world is highly counterintuitive, but it has been observed in numerous experiments. To map this vague duality theorem, physicists first bombarded lithium atoms with photons, or particles of light, from a laser to strip them of their momentum, cooling them to near absolute zero. After the atoms were cooled, an additional laser captured them as individual packets within an optical lattice. Once the atoms cooled and became confined, the researchers periodically turned the optical lattice off and on, causing the atoms to expand from the confined particle-like state to a wave-like state and then back again. . A microscope camera recorded the light emitted by atoms in their particle state at two different times, during which time the atoms behaved like waves. The authors constructed the shape of this wave by combining many images and observed it expand over time in perfect agreement with the Schrödinger equation.

source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.05699