Counting the atoms
- 1 September 1980
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Physics Today
- Vol. 33 (9), 24-29
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2914274
Abstract
The title of this article was inspired by a similar one used by Ernest Rutherford for an unpublished lecture note now in the University of Cambridge library. Rutherford's title was “The Counting of Atoms,” by which he could have meant the counting of individual ionized helium atoms (alpha particles), or, alternatively, he may have had in mind “decay counting” as an indirect indication that a parent atom had transmuted. With the modern pulsed laser, Rutherford's idea becomes entirely practicable, and individual atoms can now be counted by several different methods, the subject of the present article. Our group at Oak Ridge has demonstrated these methods with apparatus like that shown in figure 1. Practically every element in the periodic table can be detected, down to single‐atom sensitivity, by resonance‐ionization‐spectroscopy methods involving commercially available lasers.Keywords
This publication has 16 references indexed in Scilit:
- Resonance ionization spectroscopy and one-atom detectionReviews of Modern Physics, 1979
- Solar neutrino experimentsReviews of Modern Physics, 1978
- Resonant ionization studies of the fluctuation of proportional countersNuclear Instruments and Methods, 1978
- One-atom detection in individual ionization tracksOptics Letters, 1978
- A sensitive, absolute, and time-resolved method for the study of reactive atomsChemical Physics Letters, 1977
- Saturated photodissociation of CsIChemical Physics Letters, 1977
- One-atom detection using resonance ionization spectroscopyPhysical Review A, 1977
- Kinetics ofUsing Resonance Ionization SpectroscopyPhysical Review Letters, 1975
- Saturated Two-Photon Resonance Ionization ofPhysical Review Letters, 1975
- 37Ar and81Kr in the atmosphereEarth and Planetary Science Letters, 1969