Scientists' report first X-ray of a single atom | Hacker News Reader

Scientists' report first X-ray of a single atom

phys.org

99 pointswglb20 comments

> A team of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and others, led by Ohio University Professor of Physics, and Argonne National Laboratory scientist, Saw Wai Hla, have taken the world's first X-ray SIGNAL (or SIGNATURE) of just one atom.

Tangential, but the lead scientist's name, Saw Wai Hla, sounds like he is from Myanmar (Burma). As a citizen of Myanmar, I'm proud that one of my fellow country people contributed to science.

Saw Wai Hla did get his masters at Yangon University so there's a good chance he's from Myanmar.

Myanmar also has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Z._Win and the late https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Paw :)

Are you still located in Myanmar? I traveled there a few years ago—beautiful country and friendly people.

Not anymore although I have my mom and most of my relatives there. I was thinking of retiring back there and teaching computer science and English to kids from poor backgrounds. But given the political situation today, that dream is put on hold...

"Scientists".

Why would they not be?

dash is referring to the grammar.

I'm also guessing that's also what all the downvoters missed too.

Ironically it would be just fine with a dash after report

I got his point and still downvoted for derailing the thread.

I'm glad someone else noticed it. It's really annoying to see the ' misused like that.

The correct use for some context : "The scientists' report was really interesting"

Where's GrammarGPT when you need?

Let's x-ray that apostrophe, it may be hiding something.

Isn't this just EPR w/ X-Ray photons?

I say "just", but maybe EPR w/ X-Ray photons is really hard. I can't say this is my area of experimental expertise.

My quick skim looks like its more like XPS or XAFS or XANES. Mixed with AFM

Agreed, my read of the abstract is that they’re doing near edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy (so XANES) and they make it a single atom technique by tunneling the signal into an STM tip

> Isn't this just EPR w/ X-Ray photons?

From a quick read: I don't think so. There's no magnetic field, and the collected electron can be from a pair (ie both spins in one orbital)

I think it is better described as exotic STM: In normal STM, you put a bias on the tip relative to the material, and then put the tip close enough to the material so that a valence (or free) electron tunnels across the vacuum.

In this work, it appears they put the tip close to the atom and then whack one of the inner electrons with an x-ray photon, which is then collected by the tip. [I don't understand how they engineer the fields so that the scattered electron is collected by the tip, but I'm assuming the atom to be measured is somehow connected electrically to create a bias between the sample and tip. If anyone has access to the paper, don't keep it a secret.]

Corrections welcome, I'm curious myself how this works.

As a layman, I thought that this kind of resolution had been achieved with STMs decades ago. I wish the article explained the advantages of using X-rays.

The resolution is not the innovation here. Where "conventional" STM collects valence or free electrons, this work is probing the electron structure, using Xray photons to kick one out from the inner orbitals.

I don't think it's got that much to do with classic X-ray imaging anymore. It sounds much more like a scanning (electron/tunneling) microscope.

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