David Nadlinger, a Ph.D. student at University of Oxford’s Department of Physics, has won the overall prize in a national science photography competition, organized by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), for the extraordinary image titled “Single Atom in an Ion Trap”.
The image of a single positively-charged strontium atom illuminated by a blue-violet Lazor, held near motionless by electric fields between two small metal electrode needle points about 2 mm, was taken through a window of the ultra-high vacuum chamber that houses the ion trap.
“The idea of being able to see a single atom with the naked eye had struck me as a wonderfully direct and visceral bridge between the miniscule quantum world and our macroscopic reality,” said Nadlinger. “A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed the numbers to be on my side, and when I set off to the lab with camera and tripods one quiet Sunday afternoon, I was rewarded with this particular picture of a small, pale blue dot.”
To learn more about Nadlinger’s image of a single atom, click the link below.
