Past exam of the atomic and laser physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 1 b Solution 2026-10-25
Within a fixed angular momentum multiplet, the component of along follows from . The corresponding result for follows by interchanging and . For the quantum state ,These are dimensionless expectation values in the convention of part (a). Substituting into the first-order time-independent perturbation theory formula givesFor , the Landé g-factor becomesThe magnetic sublevels must first be diagonalized within a degenerate multiplet; choosing along the magnetic field already does this. For the displayed fraction is undefined, but all vector expectation values vanish and there is no first-order Zeeman splitting. A higher-order shift may remain.
Past exam of the atomic and laser physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 1 c Solution 2026-10-25
Write and retain the nuclear Coulomb potential. In spherical coordinates, the total potential energy iswhen ; is a Legendre polynomial. Treat the added term using quadratic anisotropic perturbation of hydrogen and degenerate perturbation theory in the hydrogen energy eigenbasis. It preserves parity and , so it cannot mix with , or distinct magnetic sublevels.
For a hydrogen atom, the hydrogen radial second moment givesThe angular expectation values of are for an orbital, for , and for , obtained by integrating the squared spherical harmonics. Therefore the five lowest spatial quantum states, counting statistical weight, have first-order energy levelsEach spatial quantum state has two electron spin states when spin-orbit coupling and the magnetic field are omitted. Thus these are five spatial states but only three distinct first-order energies; five distinct energies would be an incorrect reading. The accidental equality can be lifted at higher order. Quantitatively the added shifts must also be small compared with neighboring principal-shell gaps; is an asymptotic condition, not a guarantee for arbitrary large .
First-order spatial levels of locally perturbed hydrogen; the gap between principal shells is compressed
. Details. For general , the expectation value isIt does not cancel every order. At , couples to orbitals. For example its angular matrix element with is , and the radial matrix element is nonzero. The second-order nondegenerate perturbation theory sum has negative denominators, so this is a concrete nonzero higher-order contribution.
There is also a global limitation: for either negative above, . A localized wavepacket translated far along has fixed kinetic energy but arbitrarily negative potential energy, proving there is no true lowest energy level. The results describe local perturbative resonance poles, or a potential completed to a confining form far from the atomic nucleus. No globally exact ground-state cancellation exists for the potential as printed.
Past exam of the atomic and laser physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 1 d Solution 2026-10-25
Neglect hyperfine structure, spin-orbit coupling and the diamagnetic term, and set , . The Zeeman energy is . The electron spin is free, so every spatial result below is duplicated with an added .
For a magnetic field parallel to , the old magnetic quantum number remains good and the first-order energy levels areThe two orbitals have zero orbital angular momentum, so only their electron spin contributes at this order.
For a magnetic field parallel to , the expectation of in each individual orbital vanishes. One must still check the degenerate subspace: its projected is zero as well. Thus there is no first-order orbital splitting in a sufficiently weak transverse magnetic field. Spin still contributes .
The transverse orbital Zeeman mixing can be seen without assuming its size. Put , , and . In the real orbital basis, is unaffected while have off-diagonal matrix elements of modulus . Diagonalizing this two-dimensional Hamiltonian gives the spatial energy eigenvaluesWhen , their shifts relative to the earlier levels are , with added for electron spin. The displayed square-root expression also handles comparable to , provided coupling to other principal shells stays negligible. The orbital retains zero orbital correction.
These quadratic orbital estimates keep the enhanced contribution from mixing the split levels. Minimal magnetic minimal coupling also produces ; its expectation value is positive and must be added for a full order- calculation. For example it gives for . It is parametrically smaller than the mixing term when .
Past exam of the atomic and laser physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 2 c Solution 2026-10-25
The ground electron configuration of caesium has a single electron, with . Addition of angular momentum giving fixes the nuclear spin to . With dimensionless angular momentum operators, write the Fermi contact interaction asThe two hyperfine levels therefore differ by . In the convention and ,This exposes a missing ingredient in a prediction from the supplied data: and alone do not specify the valence electron contact density. Screening effect and penetration of the closed core strongly affect it. If instead denotes the total nuclear moment in units of , it must first be divided by in the displayed convention.
An explicitly crude unscreened hydrogen-like ion model uses and gives , or . It describes neither the shielding nor the radial function of neutral caesium. Using a pure unit-charge hydrogen orbital instead gives only , illustrating why a unique useful estimate cannot follow from an unspecified effective charge.
For physical neutral , the independently known zero-magnetic field clock transition isThis measured frequency, used to define the second, is supplementary physical information, not a consequence of and the rounded alone.[ref]
SI base unit: second (s) by Bureau International des Poids et Mesures. Definition: the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of caesium-133 is exactly 9 192 631 770 Hz
The direct electronic transition is in the microwave range and is a magnetic dipole transition, rather than a direct optical electric dipole transition. An optical implementation needs a two-field Raman transition.Using the corrected weak-pulse Ramsey spectrum of part (b), the peak at has height . The quantum interference fringes have spacing in angular frequency, with zeros at , and the sinc function envelope has its first zeros at . For , the central peak has approximately full width at half maximum in angular frequency. The clock transition between the two states has no first-order Zeeman energy, although a quadratic one remains.
Past exam of the atomic and laser physics course of the University of Oxford 2022 1 c Solution 2026-10-25
For , addition of angular momentum gives and . The even-parity atomic terms and atomic fine-structure levels areThe electric-dipole selection rules exclude all connections to the even-parity and electron configurations. To the odd-parity electron configuration, all seven allowed connections in pure LS coupling areHere a connection is listed independently of whether the energy level is above or below its partner.
In a weak magnetic field, use the Landé g-factorFor the three energy levels, this gives ; for it gives . The six-component spectral line is thereforeA component has frequency displacement . The electric dipole transition with has zero matrix element, since the relevant rank-one Clebsch-Gordan coefficients vanish there. The remaining allowed pairs giveThus all six frequency positions are distinct. Perpendicular to the magnetic field, both the and components are visible, with mutually perpendicular linear polarizations. Along the magnetic field the components disappear. This is the weak-field Zeeman effect, before the Paschen-Back effect changes the coupling scheme.
Past exam of the atomic and laser physics course of the University of Oxford 2022 1 d Solution 2026-10-25
The closest components above differ by . At , their separation is about . A visible spectral line near would consequently require spectral resolving power of order . An ordinary low-resolution spectrometer would merge the components.
A suitable arrangement places an excited low-pressure strontium discharge or a transversely observed atomic beam between wide electromagnet pole pieces. Collect the emission perpendicular to the magnetic field, select the desired spectral line with a prefilter or monochromator, and send it through a high-finesse scanning Fabry–Pérot interferometer to a detector. A rotatable linear polarizer separates the two components from the four components. Calibrate both the interferometer's free spectral range and the local magnetic field; take zero-field and several field-strength scans, and fit component positions against .
The magnetic field should be uniform across the viewed volume, with its associated Zeeman splitting larger than the combined natural linewidth, Doppler broadening, pressure broadening and instrumental width, but much smaller than the separations of the relevant atomic fine-structure levels. A collimated transverse atomic beam, low collision rate and restricted collection angle reduce unwanted spectral line broadening. Avoid appreciable power broadening, resolve or model isotope and hyperfine structure, and check for self-absorption. A zero-field scan and the predicted linear scaling help distinguish actual Zeeman splitting components from neighbouring spectral lines.
Laser cooling removes atomic kinetic energy through a velocity-dependent optical force, with scattered photons carrying away energy and entropy. For two counterpropagating beams detuned below resonance, motion towards one beam shifts that light closer to resonance, so the atom preferentially absorbs momentum opposite its velocity. At small velocity the net force is with . Three orthogonal beam pairs form optical molasses. Spontaneous emission has zero mean recoil in a symmetric distribution, but its momentum variance is nonzero: random absorption and emission cause heating. The cooling and heating balance sets a finite temperature.
For a weakly saturated two-level transition, write and let be the excited-state population decay rate. A useful one-axis Doppler cooling expression isThis limit belongs to the weak-intensity Doppler cooling model, with recoil energy small compared with . Experimentally, released sodium molasses clouds were probed by time of flight; the unusually small expansion demonstrated temperatures below that limit. This distinguishes an observed failure of a two-level cooling model from a failure of conservation of energy.[ref]
Nobel Lecture: Laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms by William D. Phillips. pp. 729–732, Doppler limit, optical molasses, and release/time-of-flight thermometry
Multilevel atoms permit polarization-gradient cooling: spatially varying light polarization produces different light shifts of ground-state sublevels. In Sisyphus cooling, atoms climb a light-shift potential and are preferentially optically pumped near its top into a lower-energy sublevel, repeatedly losing kinetic energy. The optical pumping and emitted light supply dissipation. This can reach below the Doppler cooling limit; the recoil scalethen becomes important. The definition of a recoil temperature sometimes differs by a factor of two, so the energy definition is the unambiguous comparison. Recoil is not a universal lower bound for every cooling protocol: suitable dark-state or resolved sideband cooling schemes can suppress scattering near the desired motional state. Resolved sideband cooling preferentially excites a transition lowering the vibrational quantum number, followed by decay that on average preserves it in the Lamb-Dicke regime.[ref]
Nobel Lecture: Superposition, entanglement, and raising Schrödinger’s cat by David J. Wineland. Section IV, cooling of quantized ion motion
Optical molasses supplies damping rather than a position-restoring force. A magneto-optical trap adds a magnetic-field gradient and appropriately chosen circular polarizations; the position-dependent Zeeman splitting gives a restoring radiation pressure imbalance as well as damping. In real alkali atoms, repumping light returns population that would otherwise accumulate in an uncoupled hyperfine level. Magnetic and optical dipole traps can subsequently hold the cold sample without continuous resonant scattering.
Applications include long-interrogation atomic clocks, precision spectroscopy, atom interferometry, and preparation for quantum simulation and Bose-Einstein condensation. Cooling reduces motion-induced frequency shifts and allows longer coherent interrogation; deeper quantum degeneracy commonly needs subsequent evaporative cooling of atoms. Finite capture velocity, available transitions, recoil heating, stray magnetic fields, and loss or heating from unwanted scattering constrain a real experiment.
The Lamb shift is a radiative displacement of atomic energy levels beyond the values from the Dirac equation in a Coulomb potential. In hydrogen, the and levels are degenerate for a point Coulomb potential in the Dirac equation, yet the level lies higher by roughly a gigahertz. This is distinct from the fine structure splitting between different levels and from nuclear-spin hyperfine structure.
Electron self-energy in the quantized electromagnetic field is the dominant contribution to the familiar hydrogen splitting; vacuum polarization contributes too. Renormalization separates the physical electron mass from its divergent free-electron self-energy. A useful leading-log scale for a hydrogenic level isnot an exact numerical formula. The enhanced sensitivity of S states follows from their nonzero wavefunction at the nucleus; leading short-distance corrections act like contact perturbations. A precision prediction also includes finite nuclear size and recoil, and must consistently separate those effects from the radiative contribution.[ref]
Theory of the Lamb shift in hydrogen and light hydrogen-like ions by Vladimir Yerokhin and others. §III A, equations (7)–(8), one-loop self-energy and vacuum-polarization scale; introduction, separation of radiative, recoil and nuclear effects
The original Lamb-Retherford experiment used a beam of hydrogen atoms, electron-impact excitation into metastable , and microwave-induced transfer into short-lived states. Those atoms decayed before reaching the detector. Metastable atoms surviving to a metal target ejected electrons, so a drop in the measured current signalled a resonance. Varying the microwave excitation and magnetic field established the displacement from the Dirac equation expectation. Microwave quenching converted a small energy difference into a measurable loss of a long-lived population, avoiding optical Doppler widths that obscure the splitting.[ref]
Fine Structure of the Hydrogen Atom by a Microwave Method by Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. and Robert Curtis Retherford. 1947, pp. 241–243, metastable beam, target-current readout and microwave resonance
In the ideal point-nucleus Dirac-Coulomb problem, hydrogen levels depend on and , so and are degenerate despite their different orbital angular momenta. The Lamb shift removes this degeneracy: the level lies about above , an energy of roughly . This is distinct from the much larger fine-structure splitting.
quantum electrodynamics changes the electron's interaction with the Coulomb field. electron self-energy and vacuum polarization give state-dependent radiative corrections; a complete prediction also keeps specified recoil and nuclear-size contributions. An wave samples the nucleus differently from a wave, so equal no longer ensures equal energy. A leading-log estimate for an radiative contribution scales as , with a numerical prefactor and further state-dependent terms. This is a scale estimate, not a replacement for renormalized bound-state QED. The measurable shift is a difference relative to a specified reference Hamiltonian, rather than an unregulated absolute vacuum energy.[ref]
Theory of the Lamb shift in hydrogen and light hydrogen-like ions by Vladimir Yerokhin and others. §II, definition of level contributions relative to the point-nucleus Dirac value and bound-state QED expansion
The original microwave experiment used a tungsten oven to dissociate hydrogen, an electron beam to populate metastable atoms, and electron ejection from a metal target to measure surviving metastable atoms. Microwaves transferred population to rapidly decaying , reducing detector current. At a fixed microwave frequency, interruption of the radiation and a scan of static magnetic field revealed Zeeman-tuned resonances. Comparing resonance locations with the Dirac-level prediction showed the level shifted upward. Field calibration and homogeneity, excessive microwave intensity, unresolved hyperfine structure and stray-electric-field quenching limit the measurement; the signal is not direct absorption by a large equilibrium excited population.[ref]
Fine Structure of the Hydrogen Atom by a Microwave Method by Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. and Robert Curtis Retherford. pp. 241–243, apparatus, Fig. 1 caption and resonance-field comparison
For an ideal weakly driven two-level atom, opposing red-detuned beams give velocity-dependent absorption and a friction force near zero velocity. Random photon recoils also cause momentum diffusion. Their balance gives the minimum Doppler temperatureat detuning in the low-saturation model, where is the spontaneous population-decay rate, equivalently the natural full linewidth expressed as an angular frequency. This limit assumes the atom has no useful ground-state internal structure.
Real atoms possess magnetic sublevels. In a suitable multilevel transition, position-dependent polarization gives different optical couplings and different AC Stark energy shifts for those sublevels. Counterpropagating beams with orthogonal linear polarizations have nearly uniform total intensity but a periodically varying polarization. Thus spatially varying light shifts can exist even without an intensity standing wave.
In Sisyphus cooling, an atom on one ground-state branch climbs a light-shift hill and loses kinetic energy. Near the upper part of the hill, optical pumping tends to transfer population to a lower branch. spontaneous emission makes this transfer dissipative and randomizes the emitted photon direction. The atom can then climb another hill. Finite pumping time is essential: instantaneous local equilibration would remove the delayed internal-state response that produces friction. The original multilevel analysis relates these optical-pumping cycles to the spatially displaced light shifts.[ref]
For large detuning compared with the natural linewidth, useful scales areup to angular-coupling and Rabi-frequency convention factors. Here is the optical Rabi angular frequency. The slow-atom capture range is of order . Typical energies in the Sisyphus regime track the light-shift scale rather than only , so reducing intensity can lower temperature below the Doppler limit. Capture becomes narrower, however, and recoil heating, imperfect polarization, magnetic fields and scattered light eventually matter. Define recoil energy ; this is an important scale, not a claim that every sub-Doppler method has the same universal final temperature.[ref]
Manipulating Atoms with Photons by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. §2, Sub-Doppler cooling; §2.1, Sisyphus effect
The experimental test must establish a narrow velocity distribution independently of fluorescence brightness. William D. Phillips's account describes moving a time-of-flight probe above and below the cloud, deliberately heating the atoms to check a previously absent signal, and release-and-recapture comparisons that included gravity and finite beam geometry. These tests separated very cold atoms from an insensitive detector or a faulty thermometer.[ref]
Nobel Lecture: Laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms by William D. Phillips. pp. 731–732, Figs. 15–16; pp. 733–734, multilevel interpretation
In a modern implementation, field cancellation and polarization checks test the mechanism, while independent expansion thermometry checks the inferred temperature. sub-Doppler cooling exploits internal-state dynamics omitted from the two-level Doppler model; it does not contradict that model within its assumptions. Past exam of the chemistry A course of the University of Cambridge 2022 Paper 2 A6 d Solution 2026-10-20
For the adsorbed lattice gas, the Helmholtz free energy isUse Stirling's approximation with large, then differentiate at fixed . Writing surface coverage as gives the adsorption chemical potentialThe occupation ratio comes from site-mixing entropy; it is essential near saturation.
Let be the number of free atoms and . In the field-free gas, both spin states have zero energy, so the one-atom partition function is , where is the thermal de Broglie wavelength. For a dilute ideal gas,ThereforeThe last equality uses . The bulk spin degeneracy is two even though the bulk magnetic field vanishes: degeneracy is not the absence of spin states.
Formal ionic counting gives La(III), N(−III), and therefore Re(VI), with a configuration. An isolated localized center would carry a saturation magnetic moment of order , much larger than the value quoted. It is not a ion made diamagnetic simply by an octahedral ligand field.
The spatially extended Re orbitals overlap strongly with N orbitals. Re–N interactions raise the -derived antibonding states, while interactions mix the states with the nitrogen network. Repetition through corner-sharing octahedra turns these combinations into broad energy bands. The nominal electron occupies a delocalized, partially filled band rather than an isolated magnetic orbital.
Only electrons close to the Fermi energy change their occupations appreciably in an applied magnetic field. Consequently a Pauli paramagnetism has a small, nonzero field-induced magnetization:when is the density of states including both spin directions, expressed per formula unit and per unit energy. This band model explains a very small moment without requiring the absence of electrons in the Re-derived band. The reported material has metallic transport and a Pauli-like response.[ref]
Preparation of bulk-phase nitride perovskite LaReN3 and topotactic reduction to LaNiO2-type LaReN2 by Simon D. Kloß and others. Magnetic and transport measurements, Figure 4
The description “saturated” in the question should not be interpreted as complete alignment of one localized spin per Re: a nearly linear metallic response over a laboratory field range need not be a true fully spin-polarized saturation moment.
Past exam of the collisionless plasma physics course of the University of Oxford 2025 1 f Solution 2026-10-25
For the ordinary plasma wave, choose and . The equations in a give andThe driven particle motion is entirely parallel to : the parallel Lorentz force has no magnetic contribution. Nevertheless, the ordinary plasma wave is electromagnetic, since and the Faraday law givesAn electrostatic plasma wave instead has and zero perturbed magnetic field. Alignment with the equilibrium magnetic field does not make a wave electrostatic. At the exact plasma wave cutoff , this propagating-wave distinction becomes degenerate.
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2014 4 c Solution 2026-10-25
The inverse-susceptibility curve has a Curie–Weiss form above and vanishes on approach to it. The material can have spontaneous magnetization for , including the zero-temperature limit, whereas for its zero-field equilibrium state is paramagnetic. At a continuous transition the spontaneous moment tends to zero at ; divergence of differential susceptibility there is not a finite saturated permanent moment.
A simple Weiss molecular field model takes the effective internal field intensity to be , with positive coupling . Let be the independent-moment Curie constant. Linearizing the single-ion response on the high-temperature side givesThis explains the straight upper branch and its positive temperature intercept. At the zero-field linearized response diverges; finite field, finite size and critical fluctuations limit its use. For a spin-only two-state mean-field model the full equation is , with ; below it has nonzero zero-field solutions.
An ordering scale near corresponds to , about four orders of magnitude larger than the preceding dipolar pair scale. Exchange interaction can supply such energies: the Pauli antisymmetry of overlapping electron states changes their spatial correlations and hence Coulomb and kinetic energies according to their spin configuration. An effective ferromagnetic coupling can favor parallel moments. It is not simply the classical magnetic field of a neighbouring dipole. For example, with the convention and , the localized-spin mean-field scale is ; this illustrates why an atomic electronic interaction, rather than a bare dipolar field, can produce a high transition temperature.
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2015 4 c Solution 2026-10-25
Choose longitudinal current along , magnetic field along , and define the oriented Hall coefficient by . For one carrier type with signed charge , a stationary transverse force balance is . Since , this gives . Using ,This is the weak-field isotropic one-carrier approximation with Hall scattering factor one, not a general multiband identity.
Under the stipulated electron-dominated approximation, the given Hall magnitudes implyTake the ratio of the intrinsic activation law:Solving gives the model's activation-gap estimateThis result uses the supplied Hall-temperature ratio and the fixed-gap, fixed-prefactor assumptions. A temperature-dependent gap or changing Hall factors would modify its interpretation.
The source's description of electrons as intrinsic silicon's majority carriers needs qualification. Intrinsic neutrality gives equal electron and hole concentrations, not an electron density majority. Electrons can nevertheless dominate conductivity and the Hall response because their mobility is larger. For two weak-field carriers,At this becomes . Thus explains the negative sign, while the one-electron formula is quantitatively accurate only if the hole contribution can be neglected. Equality itself is a concrete counterexample to a literal electron-number-majority claim. The numerical deductions above retain the approximation explicitly requested by the source.
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2017 3 a Solution 2026-10-25
Take two localized spin orientations with moments along the applied magnetic field. This assumes an electron-like spin factor of two. Their energies are , so the one-moment partition function is , with . The thermal mean moment is , and the spin-one-half paramagnetic magnetization isFor , . With the same SI convention and ,This Curie law is a zero-field or weak-field susceptibility. At arbitrary field the differential response is , and saturates at ; extending the linear law to unlimited field would contradict that finite saturation magnetization.
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2017 3 c Solution 2026-10-25
Within the stipulated localized, one-moment-per-atom spin model, the number density follows directly from mass density and molar mass:The face-centered cubic lattice is consistent with four atoms per conventional unit cell; no additional factor four is needed once has been obtained from the density. The Curie constant is . Identifying the model's with the specified Curie temperature givesAt very low temperature, a fully ordered single domain has . Its Weiss molecular field isThe cancellation of in the middle expression provides a useful check. The ordinary magnetostatic scale is only , smaller by the factor . Thus is not a plausible ordinary self-generated dipolar magnetic field of the nickel moments. It represents the exchange interaction energy in field units, not an additional Maxwell field of that magnitude. This does not assert that such large externally generated fields are forbidden. Nickel is an itinerant ferromagnet; the imposed one--per-atom model is an estimate rather than its measured microscopic moment.
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2017 3 d Solution 2026-10-25
A macroscopic nickel specimen can split into magnetic domains, each with nonzero local spontaneous magnetization but with different orientations. Their vector contributions can cancel, giving an almost zero measured net magnetization below the Curie temperature. This reduces the external stray-field energy, at the expense of magnetic domain wall energy; the balance favours a multidomain state in many ordinary specimens.
An applied magnetic field can move magnetic domain walls and rotate the domain moments, revealing a large response and eventually saturation magnetization. Thus a zero average does not mean that each local moment has become thermally disordered or that the material is above its Curie temperature. Preparation, shape and domain-wall pinning influence remanence.
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2018 4 a Solution 2026-10-25
A material with paramagnetism develops a magnetization parallel to a weak applied magnetic field intensity, with positive magnetic susceptibility and no spontaneous magnetization in its paramagnetic phase. Molecular oxygen is an example; it has unpaired electron spins.
A material with diamagnetism develops an induced magnetization opposing the applied magnetic field, with negative magnetic susceptibility. A closed-shell atom such as helium is an example; its orbital response is diamagnetic.
A ferromagnet has a spontaneously ordered magnetization below its Curie temperature, even in the limit of vanishing applied magnetic field. Iron below its Curie temperature is an example. Different magnetic domains can cancel the net moment of an unmagnetized bulk sample, despite nonzero local spontaneous magnetization.
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2018 4 c Solution 2026-10-25
The specified two-direction constraint permits magnetic moments , withwhere is the Bohr magneton. There are four magnetic gadolinium ions per conventional face-centered cubic lattice cell; the closed-shell nitrogen ions add no local spin moment. Hence the magnetic-ion number density isAt high temperature, neglect interactions and use . The one-ion partition function and mean magnetic dipole moment areIn the weak-magnetic field limit, , so . Thus the dimensionless SI magnetic susceptibility is , withThe coefficient has units of kelvin. The unrestricted-spin expression proportional to is inappropriate here: the source explicitly retains only the two orientations with . In this two-state Curie law, the squared axial moment is .




