- #1
JK423
Gold Member
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I am interested in the following scenario.
Suppose that you have a composite system, e.g. ion, atom or whatever you want. This system will have internal degrees of freedom (d.o.f.), i.e. relative positions and momenta, and also center of mass d.o.f..What i am looking for is to find an interaction (using e.g. E/M fields or something else(?)) that couples only to the center of mass d.o.f. and not to the internal ones. I'm not sure if that's even possible.
So basically i want to push the system around in space without giving energy to each constituents.
Do you know any way of doing that?
Thanks
Suppose that you have a composite system, e.g. ion, atom or whatever you want. This system will have internal degrees of freedom (d.o.f.), i.e. relative positions and momenta, and also center of mass d.o.f..What i am looking for is to find an interaction (using e.g. E/M fields or something else(?)) that couples only to the center of mass d.o.f. and not to the internal ones. I'm not sure if that's even possible.
So basically i want to push the system around in space without giving energy to each constituents.
Do you know any way of doing that?
Thanks