{"id":105294,"date":"2020-04-13T15:46:02","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T22:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/quantum-computation-solves-an-old-enigma-finding-the-vibrational-states-of-magnesium-dimer"},"modified":"2020-04-13T15:46:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T22:46:02","slug":"quantum-computation-solves-an-old-enigma-finding-the-vibrational-states-of-magnesium-dimer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/quantum-computation-solves-an-old-enigma-finding-the-vibrational-states-of-magnesium-dimer","title":{"rendered":"Quantum computation solves an old enigma: Finding the vibrational states of magnesium dimer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/quantum-computation-solves-an-old-enigma-finding-the-vibrational-states-of-magnesium-dimer.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>High vibrational states of the Magnesium dimer (Mg<sub>2<\/sub>) are an important system in studies of fundamental physics, although they have eluded experimental characterization for half a century. Experimental physicists have so far resolved the first 14 vibrational states of Mg<sub>2, <\/sub>despite reports that the ground-state may support five additional levels. In a new report, Stephen H. Yuwono and a research team in the departments of physics and chemistry at the Michigan State University, U.S., presented highly accurate initial <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/B9780122902017500062\">potential energy curves<\/a> for the ground and excited electron states of Mg<sub>2<\/sub>. They centered the experimental investigations on calculations of state-of-the-art <a href=\"https:\/\/aip.scitation.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1063\/1.1727484\">coupled-cluster<\/a> (CC) and full configuration interaction computations of the Mg<sub>2 <\/sub>dimer. The ground-state potential confirmed the existence of 19 vibrational states with minimal deviation between previously calculated rovibrational values and experimentally derived data. The computations are now published on <i><i>Science<\/i> Advances<\/i> and provide guidance to experimentally detect previously unresolved vibrational levels.<\/p>\n<p><b>Background<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Weakly bound alkaline-earth (AE<sub>2<\/sub>) dimers can function as probes of fundamental physics phenomena, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.1088\/0031-8949\/87\/02\/025302\/meta\">ultracold collisions<\/a>, doped <a href=\"https:\/\/aip.scitation.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1063\/1.4972811\">helium nanodroplets<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevLett.107.273001\">binary reactions<\/a> and even <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/pra\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevA.75.063608\">optical lattice clocks<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/pra\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevA.70.052104\">quantum gravity<\/a>. The magnesium dimer is important for such applications since it has several desirable characteristics including <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/pra\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevA.64.033425\">nontoxicity<\/a> and an absence of hyperfine structure in the most abundant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanelements.com\/magnesium-24-metal-isotope-14280-39-8\"><sup>24 <\/sup>Mg isotope<\/a> that typically facilitates the analysis of binary collisions and other quantum phenomena. However, the status of Mg<sub>2<\/sub> as a prototype heavier AE<sub>2 <\/sub>species is complicated since scientists have not been able to experimentally characterize its high vibrational levels and ground-state potential energy curve (PEC) for so long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>High vibrational states of the Magnesium dimer (Mg2) are an important system in studies of fundamental physics, although they have eluded experimental characterization for half a century. Experimental physicists have so far resolved the first 14 vibrational states of Mg2, despite reports that the ground-state may support five additional levels. In a new report, Stephen [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1497,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-energy","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}