Trapping ultracold atoms with laser light let researchers magnify and then image the wave functions of atoms that were ...

Quantum mechanics continues to offer profound insights into the fundamental nature of matter and energy, and the use of special functions plays a critical role in obtaining exact analytical solutions ...

Quantum mechanics shows that particles in our universe do not have fixed properties like everyday objects. They exist in a state of superposition until a disturbance forces them to "choose" ...

In 1931, Harvey Elliott White developed a device that traced out the shapes of electron clouds by approximating solutions to ...

This article explores how our understanding of the universe has evolved—from the scale of everyday experience down to the ...

A survey of Scientific American’s century of quantum coverage helps explain the enduring popularity of strange physics ...

The Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton, who was born 220 years ago last month, is famous for carving ...

For centuries, scientific progress has depended on more precise tools for measuring the world around us. Galileo’s telescope ...

A strange kind of geometry governs how particles move inside matter. Now, for the first time, physicists have uncovered its ...

Quantum mechanics is one of the most successful theories in science — and makes much of modern life possible. Technologies ranging from computer chips to medical-imaging machines rely on the ...

While William Rowan Hamilton isn’t a household name like, say, Einstein or Hawking, he might have been. It turns out the ...