Metastable helium was used by Sleator to demonstrate an optical version of this experiment which can occur when the size of an initial wavepacket is miniscule compared to that of the output wavelength.
Metastable helium was used by Sleator to demonstrate an optical version of this experiment which can occur when the size of an initial wavepacket is miniscule compared to that of the output wavelength. A 'microscopic' version of the effect shown by this experiment can be exhibited by a fermion in a spherical harmonic oscillator potential giving rise to a "spin-orbit pendulum". The use of hydrogen atoms with the setup for this experiment was used by Ramsey and Kleppner to create the energy source for the first(*) maser and the use of a time-dependent magnetic field for another variation on this experiment led to the discovery of Rabi oscillations. The original experiment observed two distinct spots on a target from a beam of silver atoms passing through an inhomogeneous magnetic field. For 10 points, identify this 1922 doubly-eponymous experiment which verified the quantization of spin.
Metastable helium was used by Sleator to demonstrate an optical version of this experiment which can occur when the size of an initial wavepacket is miniscule compared to that of the output wavelength.
Stern-Gerlach experiment