The heart of quantum mechanics is the wave-particle duality: matter and light possess both wave-like and particle-like attributes. Typically, the wave-like properties are inferred indirectly from the ...

The fuzzy quantum shape that describes the speed or location of a single particle, its wave function, has now been directly measured in the laboratory, giving this mathematical concept a small dose of ...

Extremely cold atoms have been nudged to self-magnify their quantum states so they can be imaged in unprecedented detail. This could help researchers better understand what quantum particles do in odd ...

Just two years ago, with the advent of a technique called direct measurement, scientists discovered they could reliably determine a system’s wave function by “weakly” measuring one of its variables (e ...

Physicists from the Canadian Institute for Measurement Standards are the first to measure a quantum mechanical wave function. And it only took 88 years from the formulation of Schroedinger’s equation!

Famously, at the quantum scale, particles can be in multiple possible locations at once. A particle’s state spreads out like a wave, peaking where the particle is likely to be found. When you measure ...

Researchers have succeeded in building a microscope that allows magnifying the wave function of excited electronic states of the hydrogen atom by a factor of more than 20,000, leading to a situation ...

It underpins the whole theory of quantum mechanics, but does it exist? For nearly a century physicists have argued about whether the wave function is a real part of the world or just a mathematical ...