Atomic and molecular processes in external fields is a research area that investigates how atoms and molecules respond to applied electromagnetic, static electric, magnetic, or intense laser fields, with emphasis on modifications of their electronic structure, energy levels, transition probabilities, and reaction dynamics. It encompasses phenomena such as Stark and Zeeman effects, field-induced ionization and dissociation, alignment and orientation of molecules, and coherence and control of quantum states. The field integrates quantum mechanics, scattering theory, and time-dependent many-body methods to model interactions and is central to high-field physics, ultrafast spectroscopy, quantum control, and precision measurements in atomic, molecular, and optical science.
Muons are unstable subatomic particles that spontaneously and rapidly transform into other particles via a process known as electroweak decay. Altering the speed with which muons decay into other particles was so far deemed ...
Professor Dallas Trinkle and colleagues have provided the first quantitative explanation for how magnetic fields slow carbon atom movement through iron, a phenomenon first observed in the 1970s but never fully understood. ...
General Physics
Jan 13, 2026
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Scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have, for the first time, demonstrated a technique that synchronizes ultrashort X-ray pulses at the X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL. This achievement opens new possibilities ...
Optics & Photonics
Jan 7, 2026
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44
Electrons determine everything: how chemical reactions unfold, how materials conduct electricity, how biological molecules transfer energy, and how quantum technologies operate. But electron dynamics happens on attosecond ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 17, 2025
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159
Liquids and solutions are complex environments—think, for example, of sugar dissolving in water, where each sugar molecule becomes surrounded by a restless crowd of water molecules. Inside living cells, the picture is even ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 14, 2025
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125
Researchers at the University of Innsbruck have shown that quantum sensors can remain highly accurate even in extremely noisy conditions. It's the first experimental realization of a powerful quantum sensing protocol, outperforming ...
Quantum Physics
Dec 1, 2025
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Speed matters. When an X-ray photon excites an atom or ion, making a core electron jump onto a higher energy level, a short-lived window of opportunity opens. For just a few femtoseconds, before an electron fills the void ...
Optics & Photonics
Nov 29, 2025
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106
The understanding of complex many-body dynamics in laser-driven polyatomic molecules is crucial for any attempt to steer chemical reactions by means of intense light fields. Ultrashort and intense X-ray pulses from accelerator-based ...
General Physics
Nov 21, 2025
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84
In a new study published in Nature Physics, researchers have demonstrated that quantum light, particularly bright squeezed vacuum (BSV), can drive strong-field photoemission at metal needle tips.
Researchers at Rice University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have unveiled a physics-based model of magnetic resonance relaxation that bridges molecular-scale dynamics with macroscopic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) ...
Soft Matter
Nov 18, 2025
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