Posted: Feb 12, 2011 7:37 am
And just to add to what Darkchilde wrote about matter waves and wave-particle duality, I see there was experimental verification of the De Broglie Equation (which captures the essence of dual behaviour) provided for electron diffraction by a Nickel crystal in 1927, which promptly sent De Broglie on his way to the Karolinska Institute to receive his Nobel in 1927.
Great post, btw, Darkchilde.
And oh look, in 1999 there was experimental confirmation of matter waves (more evidence for duality) in fullerenes.
Full paper at http://www.inoa.it/home/azavatta/References/401680.pdf
Great post, btw, Darkchilde.
And oh look, in 1999 there was experimental confirmation of matter waves (more evidence for duality) in fullerenes.
Quantum superposition lies at the heart of quantum mechanics and gives rise to many of its paradoxes. Superposition of de Broglie matter waves1 has been observed for massive particles such as electrons2, atoms and dimers3, small van der Waals clusters4, and neutrons5. But matter wave interferometry with larger objects has remained experimentally challenging, despite the development of powerful atom interferometric techniques for experiments in fundamental quantum mechanics, metrology and lithography6. Here we report the observation of de Broglie wave interference of C60 molecules by diffraction at a material absorption grating. This molecule is the most massive and complex object in which wave behaviour has been observed. Of particular interest is the fact that C60 is almost a classical body, because of its many excited internal degrees of freedom and their possible couplings to the environment. Such couplings are essential for the appearance of decoherence7, 8, suggesting that interference experiments with large molecules should facilitate detailed studies of this process.
Full paper at http://www.inoa.it/home/azavatta/References/401680.pdf