Abstract
Atoms, molecules or photons have been known for a long time, but only recently has it become possible to manipulate them as single entities and to observe their behaviour directly. Among many other feats, one can now “see” the individual atoms at the surface of a metal with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM)1 or an atomic force microscope (ATM)2, one can manipulate a single DNA molecule with “optical tweezers”3, one can confine an isolated ion in an electromagnetic trap4 or else single out one molecule embedded in a crystal lattice and observe it as it scatters photons from a laser beam5. Not only can we observe single atomic entities, but we can also employ them to perform experiments. Single atoms can for example be used to modify the properties of electromagnetic cavities, to produce non classical fields in “micromaser” devices, and to manipulate and measure the field stored in these cavities, at the single photon, or even at subphoton level6.
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Haroche, S. (1995). Experiments with Single Atoms, Molecules or Photons. In: Beltrametti, E.G., Lévy-Leblond, JM. (eds) Advances in Quantum Phenomena. NATO ASI Series, vol 347. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1975-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1975-1_3
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