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Picture of a Single Atom Wins Science Photo Contest
A remarkable photo of a single atom trapped by electric fields has just been awarded the top prize in a well-known science photography competition. The photo is titled "Single Atom in an Ion Trap" and was shot by David Nadlinger of the University of Oxford.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK today announced the winning photos of its national science photography competition. Nadlinger's grand prize photo shows an atom as a speck of light between two metal electrodes placed about 2mm (0.078in) apart.
From EPSRC:
When illuminated by a laser of the right blue-violet colour the atom absorbs and re-emits light particles sufficiently quickly for an ordinary camera to capture it in a long exposure photograph. The winning picture was taken through a window of the ultra-high vacuum chamber that houses the ion trap.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:33PM (4 children)
About that "the" how do they know its singular?
There are some trap designs where you can apply a force adjust a field and see how things move but this thing isn't that kind of trap, is it? So ... run the experiment 500x at a particle density where you should only trap an atom 50% of the time, and you trap something 250x so it "must" be one atom? Or are they playing some game where its so tight gradient that only one atom can realistically fit? I found one article from the 90s where I only have access to the abstract but apparently the exact peaks of the fluorescence spectra depends both theoretically and practically on the number of atoms in the trap, at least for very small numbers of atoms in the trap, which was interesting and maybe how these guys did it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:37PM (3 children)
$@^ it, about five seconds after I click submit, I figured it out. Absolute brightness. Likely 3x atoms would result in 3x photons and astronomers are pretty good at telling 3dB brightness apart. So if the dude's photo was analyzed to contain 2x predicted photons that would imply two atoms.
Still, pretty cool. He must trust the constant illumination of whatever was exciting that one atom because if that fluctuated it would look like a # of atoms signal.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:39PM (1 child)
Sheeeeeeeit, posting without caffeine today was brave but stupid
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Tuesday February 13 2018, @06:45PM
And here I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that perhaps you were saying that a second atom would be 3dB more. I would say we could all use 3+dB more caffeine.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 13 2018, @04:09PM
$@^ it, about five seconds after I click submit, I figured it out.
Yep, this is precisely why I keep clamoring for an "edit" function on this site, even if it's only available for 60 seconds after you post.