Talk:Atomic electron transition

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 September 2021 and 19 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Anpa12.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Terminology[edit]

I took out that reference because, as the original poster claimed, it was unauthoritative and directly contradicted the dictionary.

Additionally, I noted that the argument supposedly literate people vehemently use against quantum leap is that the change in the leap in quantum mechanics is a very, very, VERY small distance. Well, if we aren't talking about particle physics, but rather ideas, a fundamental change in the way that people think (or how industry works) is ALWAYS big.

A lot of sources on the internet disagree, apparently including a lot of scientists and people who study language. Well, they are wrong. A good argument trumps a bad one, and I think I stated it pretty clearly.

--alan d

I made some changes to the Vernacular, or Popular usage section. I disagree with this small change business. I guess if you are talking about physical distances you have a point, but everything is relative (and position of course is fairly irrelevant in QM anyway). The Lyman-alpha line in Hydrogen is an energy shift of about 75% of the ionization energy of the electron, which to me is pretty big. Imagine if you could be abruptly kicked to 75% of the way to escaping Earth's atmosphere...pretty big to you, small to someone the size of the universe. Vessels42 14:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I removed the paragraph you didn't like. I've made some changes in the other paragraph. The term "quantum leap" isn't used in quantum mechanics. If it were, it would probably refer to jumps between energy levels, rather than jumps between particles.

My understanding is that a "quantum leap" is when an electron jumps physically from one quantum state (electron cloud?) to another, resulting in an abrupt change in the energy level. This (as I understand it) implies that moving electrons from one quantum state to the other is simultaneously a jump in level as well as a physical move.

And yes, it is a term in quantum mechanics, although I suspect its not particularly useful to describe anything other than its exact definition.

--alan d

I don't know enough to answer this: is it possible for an electron to jump two energy levels? It seems to me that it would be possible, as in emission spectra. Would that also be characterised as a quantum leap? If so, then a quantum leap isn't the smallest possible leap; it is merely a jump from one state to another, without passing through intermediate states? AndyP 14:48, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have a point there. Yes, it is certainly possible for the electron to jump more than one energy level (without passing through the intermediate levels). Quantum leaps are still "small" changes in any conventional sense of the term, though of course this is relative.--Srleffler 23:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vernacular usage[edit]

Why does someone (or several people) keep deleting the section on the vernacular usage of this term? It has been deleted several times by anonymous editors. The section seems good to me. This is an actual usage of the term, and it is useful having a section that compares and contrasts the vernacular usage with the physics usage.--Srleffler 12:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it should be pointed out that a quantum leap is the smallest imaginable state change, whereas it's commonly used as a synonym for "large step for mankind". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.189.37.108 (talk) 10:53, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

TV series[edit]

Also a popular television series from the early 1990's, in which the main character "quantum shifts" between time periods in his own lifetime with the aim of solving people's problems, usually involving their deaths, within a limited period with the aid of a time travelling holographic assistant and the computer known as Ziggie. Currently being repeated on a freeview channel.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.42.254.137 (talk)

The TV series has its own article, at Quantum Leap. Information on the show belongs there, not here.--Srleffler 01:24, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RM purpose[edit]

If anyone is interested, i have put a series of questions on the talk page of the Quantum Leap redirect page relating tothe TV series move. Simply south 17:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Electron only?[edit]

According to the article (my emphasis)

In physics, a quantum leap or quantum jump is a change of an electron from one energy state to another within an atom.

Is it certain (no puns please) that it has to be an electron? Fluxons, spinons and other phenomena can also exhibit a discontinuous quantum transition, a leap. --20:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Many standard quantum mechanics textbooks, such as Merzbacher, and Landau and Lifshitz, use the term "electron" for brevity and concreteness when referring to some quantum mechanical object, although they mention this explicitly in a footnote within the first few pages.131.111.213.41 14:38, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, technically any particle or system that is 'bound'; nucleons, phonons, positronium, etc. will have quantized energy levels, and the transitions between these levels could be described as 'quantum leaps'. --ChetvornoTALK 17:02, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not used by scientists[edit]

It might be worthwhile noting that although the term is used by scientists to explain quantum mechanics to nonscientists, it is not used by scientists among themselves, who are more likely to use terms like "atomic transition". To get an idea of how the term was used in published literature, I looked at the first 400 hits on Google Books. Leaving out references to the television show, the most common useage was as a metaphor in New Age and business innovation books. There was much use in general interest books about science: such as Brian Clegg (2009) Instant Egghead Guide to Physics, Bill Nye (1993) The Science Guy's Big Blast of Science, Gribbin (1997) Einstein: a life in science, Alan Guth (1998) The Inflationary Universe. There were almost no uses in professional scientific literature; the few times it occured it was used as a metaphor for innovation: Richard Leavens (1988) Interfaces, Quantum Wells, and Superlattices. One of the few uses by a scientist to refer to atomic transitions was Arnold Sommerfeld (1934) Atomic Structure and Spectral Lines --ChetvornoTALK 10:34, 29 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"few nanoseconds or less"[edit]

First, the timing depends on the energy gap value. Second, it is generally not correct to suggest a picture like

  • the "↑" state before T0
  • transition started at T0
  • intermediate state between T0 and T1
  • transition ended at T1
  • the "↓" state after T1.

In the Schrödinger picture, we will always see some superposed state with the ↑ amplitude gradually decreasing and ↓ amplitude increasing. More general, the moment of a transition is always uncertain, and speculation such as "transition started at… and ended at…" do not have a sense. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:03, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The moment (on the time scale) of a transition is uncertain (Poissonian statistics for a single atom/ion). Nevertheless the time for a transition (jump) is always shorter then statistical period of jumping cycle (interval between jumps) - obtained from density matrix ("superposition"). You can see (experimental - not speculation) it in wiki reference[1] (page 3). The probability for given state is very close to 1 between jumps. It is similar as the radioactive decay. A given (long-living radioactive) nucleus is in an excited state (with probability about 1) until its decay (unpredictable when but statistically predictable from this matrix element). But it does not mean that nucleus is decaying - e.g. millions years - and that we can not say (at any time) which (chemical) element it is (In reality, decay/transition itself is very fast - "few nanoseconds or less"). 195.113.87.138 (talk) 13:09, 2 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quantum leap[edit]

As far as I know this phrase is slightly more specific than "big increase". The phrase is more synonymous with "paradigm shift", and presumably has arisen because quantum mechanics is one of the most important discoveries in science, and the word "leap" is in some senses similar to "advance" (eg, "a giant leap for mankind"). Hence, probably, some layman heard this phrase and assumed it meant "the advance in physics associated with quantum theory" and it stuck. Not that I'm an etymologist or a lexicographer or anything. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.30.133.31 (talk) 19:23, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the link is simpler and more analogous than that - it's a not a big nor a small but a definite jump, without significant intermediate steps. 212.250.220.116 (talk) 13:07, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Removed obscure sentence[edit]

I removed the following sentence. It is expressed obscurely (what is "doubt"?) and it does not give any context or motivation. It appears to concern stimulated emission (or absorption) in an individual atom, so it would be quite interesting to see it explained.

The prediction expressed in the paper[1] and doubt was present in the 1980s.[2] Nevertheless it was shown experimentally, that the fluorescence rate of a single atom can not be calculated by Maxwell-Bloch equations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.38.100.30 (talk) 17:43, 27 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Plan to edit[edit]

I am editing this article for a class and plan to make the following changes in the coming weeks:

Let me know if there's anything else I should be keeping in mind. --Anpa12 (talk) 15:46, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.54.1023 - Richard J. Cook, H. J. Kimble, 1985
  2. ^ http://tf.boulder.nist.gov/general/pdf/2723.pdf - Early observations of macroscopic quantum jumps in single atoms
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