{"id":155311,"date":"2023-01-13T00:22:59","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T06:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/visualizing-a-complex-electron-wavefunction-using-high-resolution-attosecond-technology"},"modified":"2023-01-13T00:22:59","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T06:22:59","slug":"visualizing-a-complex-electron-wavefunction-using-high-resolution-attosecond-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/visualizing-a-complex-electron-wavefunction-using-high-resolution-attosecond-technology","title":{"rendered":"Visualizing a complex electron wavefunction using high-resolution attosecond technology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/visualizing-a-complex-electron-wavefunction-using-high-resolution-attosecond-technology2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The early 20<sup>th<\/sup> century saw the advent of quantum mechanics to describe the properties of small particles, such as electrons or atoms. Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation in quantum mechanics can successfully predict the electronic structure of atoms or molecules. However, the \u201cduality\u201d of matter, referring to the dual \u201cparticle\u201d and \u201cwave\u201d nature of electrons, remained a controversial issue. Physicists use a complex wavefunction to represent the wave nature of an electron.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cComplex\u201d numbers are those that have both \u201creal\u201d and \u201cimaginary\u201d parts\u2014the ratio of which is referred to as the \u201cphase.\u201d However, all directly measurable quantities must be \u201creal\u201d. This leads to the following challenge: when the electron hits a detector, the \u201ccomplex\u201d phase information of the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/wavefunction\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">wavefunction<\/a> disappears, leaving only the square of the amplitude of the wavefunction (a \u201creal\u201d value) to be recorded. This means that electrons are detected only as particles, which makes it difficult to explain their dual properties in atoms.<\/p>\n<p>The ensuing century witnessed a new, evolving era of physics, namely, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/attosecond\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">attosecond<\/a> physics. The attosecond is a very short time scale, a billionth of a billionth of a second. \u201cAttosecond physics opens a way to measure the phase of electrons. Achieving attosecond time-resolution, electron dynamics can be observed while freezing <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/molecular+motion\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">molecular motion<\/a>,\u201d explains Professor Hiromichi Niikura from the Department of Applied Physics, Waseda University, Japan, who, along with Professor D. M. Villeneuve\u2014a principal research scientist at the Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory, National Research Council, and adjunct professor at University of Ottawa\u2014pioneered the field of attosecond physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The early 20th century saw the advent of quantum mechanics to describe the properties of small particles, such as electrons or atoms. Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation in quantum mechanics can successfully predict the electronic structure of atoms or molecules. However, the \u201cduality\u201d of matter, referring to the dual \u201cparticle\u201d and \u201cwave\u201d nature of electrons, remained a controversial [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155311","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=155311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}