Finding lights a way for bottom-up controlling chemical reactions with lasers in the future – based purely on electrons, the “glue” of chemistry

14-Apr-2022

The quantum-mechanical exchange interaction between electrons, a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle, can be specifically modified with intense infrared light fields on time scales of a few femtoseconds, as time-resolved experiments on sulfur hexafluoride molecules show. This finding ...

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Study shows how the mechanism of photoionization can be used to gain insights into complex molecular potentials

18-Mar-2022

How can researchers use the mechanism of photoionization to gain insight into complex molecular potential? This question has now been answered by a team led by Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Sansone from the Institute of Physics at the University of Freiburg. The researchers from Freiburg, the Max Planck ...

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Sophisticated measurement technology for maximum precision

04-Sep-2020

High-precision measurements of the mass of the deuteron, the nucleus of heavy hydrogen, provide new insights into the reliability of fundamental quantities in atomic and nuclear physics. This is reported in the journal "Nature" by a collaboration led by the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear ...

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Tiny change in the mass of individual atoms for the first time measured

08-May-2020

A new door to the quantum world: when an atom absorbs or releases energy via the quantum jump of an electron, it becomes heavier or lighter, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity (E = mc²). However, the effect is minuscule for a single atom. Nevertheless, the team of Klaus Blaum and Sergey ...

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31-Jan-2020

Scientists from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) have carried out pioneering optical measurements of highly charged ions with unprecedented precision. To do this, they isolated a single Ar¹³⁺ ion from an extremely hot plasma ...

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11-Nov-2019

In two experiments performed at the free-electron laser FLASH in Hamburg a cooperation led by physicists from the Heidelberg Max Planck Institute for Nuclear physics (MPIK) demonstrated strongly-driven nonlinear interaction of ultrashort extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) laser pulses with atoms and ions. ...

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14-Jun-2019

Simulations show new methods for efficient polarization: Physicists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg proposed novel methods for generation of relativistic spin polarized electron and positron beams. Using extensive simulations, they found three different scenarios ...

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20-Jul-2017

What is the mass of a proton? Scientists from Germany and Japan successfully did an important step towards the most exact knowledge of this fundamental constant. By means of precision measurements on a single proton, they could improve the precision by a factor of three and also correct the ...

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14-Nov-2016

It is definitely the most famous experiment in quantum physics: in the double slit experiment, a particle is fired onto a plate with two parallel slits, so there are two different paths on which the particle can reach the detector on the other side. Due to its quantum properties, the particle ...

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Proton is seen escaping the molecule

24-Oct-2016

Imagine what it would be like to watch how the individual atoms of molecules rearrange during a chemical reaction to form a new substance, or to see the compounds of DNA move, rearrange and replicate. Such capability would give unprecedented insight to understand and potentially control the ...

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