In other words, you’re looking at the first picture of an atom’s wave function. Here, scientists are gazing into the structure of a hydrogen atom, the simplest atom in existence. Until very ...

Figure 2: Measurement of hydrogen atom wave functions (Physical Review Letters via New Scientist) Figure 3: 3D simulation of electron orbitals of the hydrogen atom (from askamathematician.com). The ...

What you’re looking at is the first direct observation of an atom’s electron orbital — an atom’s actual wave function ... of an electronic orbital of a hydrogen atom placed in a static ...

A quantum-style microscope has imaged the hydrogen atom’s wave function, the equation that determines its electrons’ positions – and in turn the atom’s properties. The electrons that dance ...

That is what makes a paper on imaging the wavefunction of an ionized, vibrating hydrogen molecule so interesting ... things are different. The wave function—and hence the probability of finding ...

More information: M. Waitz et al. "Imaging the square of the correlated two-electron wave function of a hydrogen molecule." Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02437-9 ...

The wavefunction of each of these states is a standing wave with a nodal pattern ... which describe how it changes as a function of two coordinates – the so-called parabolic coordinates. That is, the ...