Recent content by KBT

Yes. The Doppler limit can be derived by considering the interplay between the optical molasses cooling force and the heating effect of random spontaneous emission. The spontaneous emission can be modeled as a random walk in momentum space with steps of \hbar k. Nowhere in this derivation is...

This is a good question. It depends on what reference frame the atoms are moving with respect to. I'm moving at nearly the speed of light with respect to some reference frame, and the atoms that I am composed of aren't tearing apart. (I hope.) But now suppose a composite atom is moving at...

Let's see if I can remember this from my EM class. It's been a while. Well, imagine you are looking at the sky 90 degrees from the direction the sun's rays are traveling. The light that reaches your eyes was scattered from something (dust, air, etc.) in the sky. If we treat this something...