{"id":208595,"date":"2025-03-13T09:27:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T14:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-new-protocol-to-image-wave-functions-in-continuous-space"},"modified":"2025-03-13T09:27:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T14:27:31","slug":"a-new-protocol-to-image-wave-functions-in-continuous-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-new-protocol-to-image-wave-functions-in-continuous-space","title":{"rendered":"A new protocol to image wave functions in continuous space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-new-protocol-to-image-wave-functions-in-continuous-space.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In recent years, physicists have been trying to better understand the behavior of individual quantum particles as they move in space. Yet directly imaging these particles with high precision has so far proved challenging, due to the limitations of existing microscopy methods.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at CNRS and \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure in Paris, France, have now developed a new protocol to directly image the evolution of a single-atom wave packet, a delocalized quantum state that determines the probability that an associated atom will be found in a specific location. This imaging technique, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/PhysRevLett.134.083403\" target=\"_blank\">introduced<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>, could open exciting possibilities for the precise study of complex quantum systems in continuous space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur group is interested in the study of ultracold atoms, the coldest systems in the universe, just a few billionths of degrees above absolute zero, where matter displays fascinating behaviors,\u201d Tarik Yefsah, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org. \u201cOne of these behaviors is the so-called superfluidity, a remarkable state of matter, where particles flow without friction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In recent years, physicists have been trying to better understand the behavior of individual quantum particles as they move in space. Yet directly imaging these particles with high precision has so far proved challenging, due to the limitations of existing microscopy methods. Researchers at CNRS and \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure in Paris, France, have now developed [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[385,48,1617,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208595","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}