Breakthrough in blinking molecules phenomenon
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 16:14
in Physics & Chemistry
A new paper offers an important new understanding of an enduring mystery in chemical physics. More than a century ago, at the dawn of modern quantum mechanics, the Noble Prize-winning physicist Neils Bohr predicted so-called "quantum jumps." He predicted that these jumps would be due to electrons making transitions between discrete energy levels of individual atoms and molecules. Although controversial in Bohr's time, such quantum jumps were experimentally observed, and his prediction verified, in the 1980s. More recently, with the development of single molecule imaging techniques in the early 1990s, it has been possible to observe similar jumps in individual molecules.