🔬 Category

physics.atom-ph

725 papers

The subatomic world is a realm where matter behaves in ways that defy our everyday intuition, and this category explores the fundamental building blocks of our universe. From the intricate dance of quarks inside a proton to the strange properties of electrons, these studies reveal the deep rules that govern everything from the smallest particles to the largest stars.

At Gist.Science, we track every new preprint in this field as it appears on arXiv, ensuring you stay ahead of the curve. For each discovery, we provide both a clear, plain-language explanation of the core ideas and a detailed technical summary for those who want to dive deeper into the mathematics and methodology.

Below are the latest papers in Atom-Ph, offering fresh insights into the structure and behavior of the atomic scale.

🔬 atomic physics

Inverse identification of thermal-radiative parameters for reduced effective-temperature uncertainty in an ion optical clock

This paper presents a hybrid inversion framework combining infrared thermography, finite-element modeling, and surrogate-based optimization to accurately identify thermal-radiative parameters, thereby reducing the effective-temperature uncertainty and the associated blackbody-radiation shift in room-temperature single-ion optical clocks to a frequency-shift uncertainty of 1.647 × 10⁻¹⁹.

Jie Zhao, Yani Zuo, Shaoyang Dai, Chaowei Wang, Ang Huang, Jian Song, Guangyao Wang, Fangfei Wu, Haotian Shi, Zhengyong (…)2026-10-14
🔬 atomic physics

Valley-resolved high harmonics probe symmetry breaking beyond the Dirac cone

This paper demonstrates that valley-resolved high-harmonic generation driven by counter-rotating laser fields serves as a sensitive probe for detecting symmetry-breaking lattice corrections, such as trigonal warping, that lie beyond the emergent Dirac cone description of graphene, effectively using laser intensity as a collision energy to reveal ultraviolet granular physics.

Pablo Pais, Alfredo Iorio, Marcelo F. Ciappina2026-10-14
🔬 atomic physics

Cavity-modified static polarizabilities of atoms and small molecules within QED full configuration interaction

Using quantum-electrodynamical full configuration interaction, this study demonstrates that optical cavity confinement can either suppress or enhance the static polarizabilities of atoms and molecules depending on their electronic structure, revealing a critical competition between dipole self-energy and photon exchange that dictates modifications to Stark and blackbody-radiation shifts.

T. Zalialiutdinov, D. Solovyev2026-10-14
🔬 atomic physics

Optimal Calibration-Free Observable for the Nucleon-Coupling Ratio in a Dual-Alkali Comagnetometer for Dark Matter Searches

This paper demonstrates that while the inter-species phase difference serves as a robust, calibration-free observable for extracting the nucleon-coupling ratio in a dual-alkali comagnetometer at frequencies above 100 Hz, incorporating the amplitude ratio is necessary to maximize precision at lower frequencies, provided the relative gain is sufficiently well-calibrated.

Yossi Rosenzweig, Yevgeny Kats, Eli Sarid, Menachem Givon, Yonathan Japha, Ron Folman2026-10-12
🔬 atomic physics

Optical atomic clocks on all-optical atom chips

This paper investigates the feasibility and potential performance of optical atomic clocks based on all-optical atom chips using neutral strontium atoms, demonstrating that such devices can achieve a short-term fractional frequency stability of approximately 10−1610^{-16} and an accuracy of about 5×10−155 \times 10^{-15} by leveraging magic wavelengths, van der Waals forces, and AC Stark shift compensation.

Yuri B. Ovchinnikov2026-10-12
🔬 atomic physics

Experimental observation of conformal field theory spectra

This paper reports the direct experimental observation of universal energy excitation spectra and dynamical properties of Ising and tricritical Ising conformal field theories using a tunable Rydberg atom quantum simulator, thereby validating theoretical predictions and establishing a method for diagnosing unknown universality classes.

Xiangkai Sun, Yuan Le, Stephen Naus, Richard Bing-Shiun Tsai, Lewis R. B. Picard, Sara Murciano, Michael Knap, Jason Ali (…)2026-10-09
🔬 atomic physics

Achieving a long lifetime synchronized state in a thermal vapor Rydberg time crystal

This paper demonstrates the creation of a long-lived synchronized time crystal state in a thermal-vapor Rydberg atom ensemble by utilizing pulsed rf driving to achieve phase entrainment and observing phase diffusion timescales up to 2.3 ms, which significantly exceed the Rydberg state lifetime and are successfully modeled by a classical Fokker-Planck equation.

William J. Watterson, Dixith Manchaiah, Christopher L. Holloway2026-10-08
🔬 atomic physics

Full molecular dynamics simulations of a single trapped ion in a neutral bath

This paper presents full molecular dynamics simulations of a single trapped ion in a neutral bath, revealing that gas density and short-range interaction features significantly influence cooling dynamics and steady-state kinetic energy through the transient formation of molecular-ion complexes, resulting in higher energies than predicted by standard simulations and a dependence on bath atom mass.

Saajid Chowdhury, Ruiren Shi, Jesús Pérez-Ríos2026-10-08