Quantum mirage

Quantum mirage

Left: An STM image of a quantum stadium corral made of iron atoms on a copper (111) surface (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/corral.html). Right: A 2D quantum dynamics simulation that shows the motion of an electron cloud in a stadium corral setup. When scientists placed an atom at one focus of the corral, a mirage of the atom appeared at the other focus. Specifically the same electronic properties were present in the electrons surrounding both foci, even though the atom was only present at one focus. The electron cloud around the other focus is called quantum mirage, a phenomenon scientists hope to construct atomic-scale processors in the future.


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