regarding the image of an atom, you must read the paper more carefully. Your questions have simple answers:
“How did they choose which atoms to use in image construction?” They used every hydrogen atom that were excited at the focus of the laser beam. The state selection process is made with the frequency of the UV laser. A temporal selection is made with the pulsed UV laser. The interference pattern produces electrons ejected at specific angles.
“How did they eliminate common mode errors from the toroid?” Not sure how this applies here. The atoms emit electrons at an angle that is converted into a position at the focal plane. They saw interference rings in a previous experiment with Xe, so the resolution is sufficient. You seem to be thinking, erroneously, that the image is a representation of the wavefunction in ‘position space’, but it is actually a representation of interference in momentum space.
“What was their control variable?” The frequency of the ionizing laser which allowed them to select specific states.
“None of these questions are answered in the scientific publications” If you had worked in this field of research you could figure it out.
“The scientific method requires that multiple experiments should be done by different groups and with different methods before one should believe a result.” Indeed. But experimenters are not motivated to repeat an experiment that already agrees with 100-year old quantum mechanics. (It’s not like they are measuring the speculative Higgs boson or dark matter particles here.) What you are asking is to repeat a measurement that is as established as the two-slit experiment to observe electron interference and the atomic hydrogen wavefunction. There is very little potential for a new discovery.
Dear nixtaken,
regarding the image of an atom, you must read the paper more carefully. Your questions have simple answers:
“How did they choose which atoms to use in image construction?” They used every hydrogen atom that were excited at the focus of the laser beam. The state selection process is made with the frequency of the UV laser. A temporal selection is made with the pulsed UV laser. The interference pattern produces electrons ejected at specific angles.
“How did they eliminate common mode errors from the toroid?” Not sure how this applies here. The atoms emit electrons at an angle that is converted into a position at the focal plane. They saw interference rings in a previous experiment with Xe, so the resolution is sufficient. You seem to be thinking, erroneously, that the image is a representation of the wavefunction in ‘position space’, but it is actually a representation of interference in momentum space.
“What was their control variable?” The frequency of the ionizing laser which allowed them to select specific states.
“None of these questions are answered in the scientific publications” If you had worked in this field of research you could figure it out.
“The scientific method requires that multiple experiments should be done by different groups and with different methods before one should believe a result.” Indeed. But experimenters are not motivated to repeat an experiment that already agrees with 100-year old quantum mechanics. (It’s not like they are measuring the speculative Higgs boson or dark matter particles here.) What you are asking is to repeat a measurement that is as established as the two-slit experiment to observe electron interference and the atomic hydrogen wavefunction. There is very little potential for a new discovery.