Atomic vibrations?

  • #1
Mikael17
39
3
The "ticks" of the current standard atomic clocks are marked by the regular vibrations of an ensemble of cesium atoms, which vibrate 9.2 billion times every second
How about other atoms, how fast does these vibrate ?
And where is possible to ready about this ?
 
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  • #3
Vanadium 50 said:
The link does not lead to knowledge of how fast other elements vibrate. I am not sure you understood the question.
 
  • #4
Atoms don't vibrate, at least not in any way relevant to an atomic clock. And lattice vibrations in solids are thermal and don't have a well defined frequency. If you read the wiki link V50 provided, it would be clear that atomic clocks don't work the way you appear to think, and your question as written is meaningless.

Electrons in atomic orbitals can absorb energy in various ways and get kicked into higher energy states. They can then decay back into lower energy states, emitting the energy as a photon. Because the energy, ##E##, of a photon is related to its frequency, ##f##, by ##E=hf## where ##h## is Planck's constant, the frequency of the emitted photon is defined by the energy difference between the states. You can then use the photons' oscillating electromagnetic fields as "pendulums" in a very precise clock. (Glossing over a lot of technical details here.) So it's the electromagnetic field oscillating, not the atom.

Caesium has one transition in particular that was convenient to work with and convenient for defining a second that was consistent with the historical definition of the second, but is otherwise fairly unremarkable. All atoms have electrons; all can be kicked into higher energy states and decay. I don't know if there's a list of them all anywhere. The Lyman, Ballmer and Paschen series of hydrogen transitions are quite famous. The sodium D line (wavelength 589nm) is also quite famous.
 
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  • #5
Maybe you could start at the link below. As @Ibix said, wherever you read about "cesium atoms, which vibrate 9.2 billion times every second" is just wrong. Electrons in atoms can transition from one energy level to another, and in the process they give off light (or electromagnetic radiation). The light has a specific frequency, The specific energy transition in Cesium is very stable, and so is used as the basis for atomic clocks. The number of different frequencies of these energy transitions in different atoms is huge.

https://www.khanacademy.org/science...ctroscopy/v/electronic-transitions-and-energy
 
  • #6
In particular the interaction of the electronic and nuclear spins in Cesium produces an energy splitting (this is called hyperfine splitting) ##\frac E h = 9.192631770 GHz ##. This was a good match for radar frequencies and so became a standard technique because of availability of electronics following WWII.
Other atoms have hyperfine splittings, now that you khow this term you can search them out.
 
  • #7
Apart from all that, the Wikipedoa articles does list transition frequencies for rubidium and hydrogen as well as cesium, plus 4 elements with a transition in the opyical.
 

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