Quantum Chemistry—The Strange World of Atoms

Raymond Daudel, Bernard Pullman

F. J. Duarte

Undoubtedly, ours is a quantum world and it is getting more quantum with each passing day. The quantum nature of our world is firmly based on the transistor, the universal classical computer, the laser and its innumerable applications, the atomic clock, quantum chemistry, NMR, MRI, and numerous other quantum based medical technologies. And now we should add quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, and quantum computing. These are all tangible utilitarian technologies that we already have at hand. Adding all the coming discoveries in quantum chemistry and quantum biology will certainly, and surely, seal the character of this world… as a quantum world.

Hinne Hettema

J. M. Raimond, M. Brune

When Thought Experiments Become RealThe world is made of atoms which emit, absorb and scatter light, the crucial vehicle of the information we receive from our environment. At the beginning of the last century, quantum theory revealed the strange laws which govern matter and radiation on a microscopic scale, in a counter-intuitive world where notions of wave and particle are intimately intertwined.Light is both a continuous wave and a set of discrete photons! This “strange” physics is founde...

Hugo V. Cable, Kavan Kishore Modi

Cable and Modi talk about an obscure property of the quantum world called discord. The microscopic world of photons, electrons and atoms is very different from the classical world of people's everyday experience. Here the strange rules of the quantum world apply, such as superposition, where particles can exist in two places at once, or simultaneously spin clockwise and anticlockwise. It is the very act of observing the particle that fixes it in one state or the other.

David B. Cook