Energy Levels Hopping

From: Dr. Photon (brendan.roycroft_at_nmrc.ie)
Date: 01/12/05 

Date: 12 Jan 2005 05:33:36 -0800

I've seen a few people ask about how "real" orbitals are, and could
they ever be measured.

Well they have been measured. Take a look at

"Direct observation of d-orbital holes and Cu-Cu bonding in Cu2O",
Nature, vol 401, p49-52, September 1999.

Authors: J. M. Zuo*, M. Kim*, M. O'Keeffe² & J. C. H. Spence*
* Department of Physics and Astronomy,
² Department of Chemistry,
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA

The first paragraph is free at

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v401/n6748/abs/401049a0_fs.html

and you can download the full article with subscription. Try to get a
copy somehow, search the author's home pages, for example, or search
for references to the article.

As a d orbital is much weirder looking than an s orbital (which might
just be measured as a fuzzy blob, for example), then their result is
totally convincing that the orbital shapes exist and are exactly as QM
says they are.

Figure 3 is a beauty.

See also

Nature 432, 867 - 871 (16 December 2004); doi:10.1038/nature03183

"Tomographic imaging of molecular orbitals"

J. ITATANI1,2, J. LEVESQUE1,3, D. ZEIDLER1, HIROMICHI NIIKURA1,4, H.
PÉPIN3, J. C. KIEFFER3, P. B. CORKUM1 & D. M. VILLENEUVE1

1 National Research Council of Canada, 100 Sussex Drive, Ottawa,
Ontario K1A 0R6, Canada
2 University of Ottawa, 150 Louis Pasteur, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5,
Canada
3 INRS- Energie et Materiaux, 1650 boulevard Lionel-Boulet, CP 1020,
Varennes, Québec J3X 1S2, Canada
4 PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency, 4-1-8 Honcho Kawaguchi
Saitama, 332-0012, Japan

where the authors image the molecular N2 bonding orbital. The abstract
is free at

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v432/n7019/abs/nature03183_fs.html

In other words, experiments have been made and orbitals exist both in
atomic and molecular cases just as QM says they do.

best,

BR

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