*For first time, researchers see individual atoms keep away from each other or bunch up as pairs

For first time, researchers see individual atoms keep away from each other or bunch up as pairs
September 15, 2016 by Jennifer Chu


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-09-individual-atoms-bunch-pairs.html#jCp

If you bottle up a gas and try to image its atoms using today's most powerful microscopes, you will see little more than a shadowy blur. Atoms zip around at lightning speeds and are difficult to pin down at ambient temperatures.

http://phys.org/news/2016-09-individual-atoms-bunch-pairs.html


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If you bottle up a gas and try to image its atoms using today's most powerful microscopes, you will see little more than a shadowy blur. Atoms zip around at lightning speeds and are difficult to pin down at ambient temperatures.

If, however, these atoms are plunged to ultracold temperatures, they slow to a crawl, and scientists can start to study how they can form exotic states of matter, such as superfluids, superconductors, and quantum magnets.

Physicists at MIT have now cooled a gas of potassium atoms to several nanokelvins—just a hair above absolute zero—and trapped the atoms within a two-dimensional sheet of an optical lattice created by crisscrossing lasers. Using a high-resolution microscope, the researchers took images of the cooled atoms residing in the lattice.

By looking at correlations between the atoms' positions in hundreds of such images, the team observed individual atoms interacting in some rather peculiar ways, based on their position in the lattice. Some atoms exhibited "antisocial" behavior and kept away from each other, while some bunched together with alternating magnetic orientations. Others appeared to piggyback on each other, creating pairs of atoms next to empty spaces, or holes.

The team believes that these spatial correlations may shed light on the origins of superconducting behavior. Superconductors are remarkable materials in which electrons pair up and travel without friction, meaning that no energy is lost in the journey. If superconductors can be designed to exist at room temperature, they could initiate an entirely new, incredibly efficient era for anything that relies on electrical power.

Martin Zwierlein, professor of physics and principal investigator at MIT's NSF Center for Ultracold Atoms and at its Research Laboratory of Electronics, says his team's results and experimental setup can help scientists identify ideal conditions for inducing superconductivity.

"Learning from this atomic model, we can understand what's really going on in these superconductors, and what one should do to make higher-temperature superconductors, approaching hopefully room temperature," Zwierlein says.

Zwierlein and his colleagues' results appear in the Sept. 16 issue of the journal Science. Co-authors include experimentalists from the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics, and two theory groups from San Jose State University, Ohio State University, the University of Rio de Janeiro, and Penn State University.

"Atoms as stand-ins for electrons"

Today, it is impossible to model the behavior of high‐temperature superconductors, even using the most powerful computers in the world, as the interactions between electrons are very strong. Zwierlein and his team sought instead to design a "quantum simulator," using atoms in a gas as stand-ins for electrons in a superconducting solid.

The group based its rationale on several historical lines of reasoning: First, in 1925 Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli formulated what is now called the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two electrons may occupy the same quantum state—such as spin, or position—at the same time. Pauli also postulated that electrons maintain a certain sphere of personal space, known as the "Pauli hole."

His theory turned out to explain the periodic table of elements: Different configurations of electrons give rise to specific elements, making carbon atoms, for instance, distinct from hydrogen atoms.

The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi soon realized that this same principle could be applied not just to electrons, but also to atoms in a gas: The extent to which atoms like to keep to themselves can define the properties, such as compressibility, of a gas.

"He also realized these gases at low temperatures would behave in peculiar ways," Zwierlein says.

British physicist John Hubbard then incorporated Pauli's principle in a theory that is now known as the Fermi-Hubbard model, which is the simplest model of interacting atoms, hopping across a lattice. Today, the model is thought to explain the basis for superconductivity. And while theorists have been able to use the model to calculate the behavior of superconducting electrons, they have only been able to do so in situations where the electrons interact weakly with each other.

"That's a big reason why we don't understand high-temperature superconductors, where the electrons are very strongly interacting," Zwierlein says. "There's no classical computer in the world that can calculate what will happen at very low temperatures to interacting [electrons]. Their spatial correlations have also never been observed in situ, because no one has a microscope to look at every single electron."


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-09-individual-atoms-bunch-pairs.html#jCp

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Good catch Cr6,

Ultracold (nanokelvins) atoms trapped in a grid of crisscrossing lasers. Technology is moving along. Of course the main interests are potential superconductor breakthroughs.

I find the details in the section Carving out personal space most interesting.

At the edges of the lattice, where the gas was more dilute, the researchers observed atoms forming Pauli holes, maintaining a certain amount of personal space within the lattice.

"They carve out a little space for themselves where it's very unlikely to find a second guy inside that space," Zwierlein says.

Where the gas was more compressed, the team observed something unexpected: Atoms were more amenable to having close neighbors, and were in fact very tightly bunched. These atoms exhibited alternating magnetic orientations.

"These are beautiful, antiferromagnetic correlations, with a checkerboard pattern—up, down, up, down," Zwierlein describes.

At the same time, these atoms were found to often hop on top of one another, creating a pair of atoms next to an empty lattice square. This, Zwierlein says, is reminiscent of a mechanism proposed for high-temperature superconductivity, in which electron pairs resonating between adjacent lattice sites can zip through the material without friction if there is just the right amount of empty space to let them through.

It reveals atoms interacting in reduced energy conditions, clearly suggesting unusual charge matter and emission equilibrium, both clumping and repulsion.
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Electron Clumps of 8
Prof. Kanarev of Russia claims to have discovered that electrons outside atoms clump together in two lines of four electrons each, with one line oriented the opposite of the other.

Atom Model Like MM's
Kanarev's atom model is similar to MM's, which is why the rest of this is interesting.

Large Electron Torus
He found that each electron is apparently the shape of a large torus, but I figured the torus may be the shape of the path of the electron around the pole of a proton, which would conform with MM's model.

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Lloyd, Very interesting. This is the first I've heard of Professor Kanarev. I see there's a lot of additional info at the peswiki link.

Professor Kanarev

http://peswiki.com/directory:kanarev-electrolysis
Directory:Kanarev Electrolysis

Overview
The following is translated from Russian.
Professor Kanarev has developed a new theory of a microcosm, which reliability it has proved not only new interpretation of huge quantity of the experimental information on a life of elementary particles, but also results of own experimental researches on studying electromagnetic structures of photons, electrons, atoms, molecules and clusters.
He patents the simple device on studying nucleus of atoms with the help of cold nuclear synthesis.
However, he has devoted the greatest quantity of experimental researches to studying of power of molecules of water with the help plasma, lowcurret and usual electrolysis. On the given subjects he has received 20 patents.
Professor Kanarev has carried out complex experimental check of opportunities of water to generate additional thermal energy and considerably to reduce expenses of energy for reception of hydrogen from water. It managed to simulate to some extent process of decomposition of water on hydrogen and oxygen which occur in photosynthesis.
He has found reserves of reduction of expenses of energy on electrolysis waters not only in the process of electrolysis, but also in power supplies electrolysers. He has patented a line lowcurrent electrolysers which can decompose water to hydrogen and oxygen, even for a time after the power supply has been switched off.
Certainly, this is only the beginning of studying this unusual phenomenon, but it forms a basis from which other researchers can confidently be connected to process to perfection the various techniques developed by professor Kanarev. He says that is the purpose of his site.
For details regarding this information, the reader is directed to the book "The Foundation of Physchemistry of Micro World". http://Kanarev.innoplaza.net Quants 1-20.

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LloydK wrote:
Large Electron Torus
He found that each electron is apparently the shape of a large torus, but I figured the torus may be the shape of the path of the electron around the pole of a proton, which would conform with MM's model.

A torus conforms to the stacked spin model, no proton needed.

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A torus conforms to the stacked spin model, no proton needed.

Nevyn, you lost me. Please elaborate.

P.S. Oops, sorry. I know better.

The A spin as a Torus?

Really?

But I thought I read somewhere that electrons were perfect spheres. Guess I should find the source.
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No, not the A spin, that is the only spin that maintains a sphere and only because it is rotating a sphere and does not affect the shape of it. Any spin above the axial spin is kind of a torus because of the doubling radius. Just go to my SpinSim to see it:

Axial spin: http://www.nevyns-lab.com/mathis/app/SpinSimulator/app.html?set1=y&set1_levels=y,n,n,n

X spin: http://www.nevyns-lab.com/mathis/app/SpinSimulator/app.html?set1=y&set1_levels=y,y,n,n&rec=y&for=5000

Y spin: http://www.nevyns-lab.com/mathis/app/SpinSimulator/app.html?set1=y&set1_levels=y,y,y,n&rec=y&for=60000

Z spin: http://www.nevyns-lab.com/mathis/app/SpinSimulator/app.html?set1=y&set1_levels=y,y,y,y&rec=y&for=120000

Miles has stated that the electron is a sphere in this paper. However, I can't justify this belief when working in a stacked spin model.