Physicists observe light-matter interaction of two atoms for the first time
Thursday, January 15, 2015 - 09:30
in Physics & Chemistry
If two children splash in the sea high water waves will emerge due to constructive superposition. Different observations are made for the microscopic world in an experiment where physicists used a laser beam to generate light waves from two cesium atoms. The light waves were reflected back from two parallel mirrors. It turned out that this experimental arrangement suppressed the emergence of high light waves. With their experiment the scientists observed the most fundamental scenario of light-matter interaction with two atoms.