Definite quadratic formIn mathematics, a definite quadratic form is a quadratic form over some real vector space V that has the same sign (always positive or always negative) for every non-zero vector of V. According to that sign, the quadratic form is called positive-definite or negative-definite. A semidefinite (or semi-definite) quadratic form is defined in much the same way, except that "always positive" and "always negative" are replaced by "never negative" and "never positive", respectively.
Electron microscopeAn electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. They use electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light, electron microscopes have a higher resolution of about 0.1 nm, which compares to about 200 nm for light microscopes.
Valence electronIn chemistry and physics, a valence electron is an electron in the outer shell associated with an atom, and that can participate in the formation of a chemical bond if the outer shell is not closed. In a single covalent bond, a shared pair forms with both atoms in the bond each contributing one valence electron. The presence of valence electrons can determine the element's chemical properties, such as its valence—whether it may bond with other elements and, if so, how readily and with how many.
Superdense codingIn quantum information theory, superdense coding (also referred to as dense coding) is a quantum communication protocol to communicate a number of classical bits of information by only transmitting a smaller number of qubits, under the assumption of sender and receiver pre-sharing an entangled resource. In its simplest form, the protocol involves two parties, often referred to as Alice and Bob in this context, which share a pair of maximally entangled qubits, and allows Alice to transmit two bits (i.e.
Electron countingIn chemistry, electron counting is a formalism for assigning a number of valence electrons to individual atoms in a molecule. It is used for classifying compounds and for explaining or predicting their electronic structure and bonding. Many rules in chemistry rely on electron-counting: Octet rule is used with Lewis structures for main group elements, especially the lighter ones such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, 18-electron rule in inorganic chemistry and organometallic chemistry of transition metals, Hückel's rule for the π-electrons of aromatic compounds, Polyhedral skeletal electron pair theory for polyhedral cluster compounds, including transition metals and main group elements and mixtures thereof, such as boranes.
Exotic atomAn exotic atom is an otherwise normal atom in which one or more sub-atomic particles have been replaced by other particles of the same charge. For example, electrons may be replaced by other negatively charged particles such as muons (muonic atoms) or pions (pionic atoms). Because these substitute particles are usually unstable, exotic atoms typically have very short lifetimes and no exotic atom observed so far can persist under normal conditions.
Quantum teleportationQuantum teleportation is a technique for transferring quantum information from a sender at one location to a receiver some distance away. While teleportation is commonly portrayed in science fiction as a means to transfer physical objects from one location to the next, quantum teleportation only transfers quantum information. The sender does not have to know the particular quantum state being transferred. Moreover, the location of the recipient can be unknown, but to complete the quantum teleportation, classical information needs to be sent from sender to receiver.
Delocalized electronIn chemistry, delocalized electrons are electrons in a molecule, ion or solid metal that are not associated with a single atom or a covalent bond. The term delocalization is general and can have slightly different meanings in different fields: In organic chemistry, it refers to resonance in conjugated systems and aromatic compounds. In solid-state physics, it refers to free electrons that facilitate electrical conduction. In quantum chemistry, it refers to molecular orbital electrons that have extended over several adjacent atoms.
Transmission electron microscopyTransmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a microscopy technique in which a beam of electrons is transmitted through a specimen to form an image. The specimen is most often an ultrathin section less than 100 nm thick or a suspension on a grid. An image is formed from the interaction of the electrons with the sample as the beam is transmitted through the specimen. The image is then magnified and focused onto an imaging device, such as a fluorescent screen, a layer of photographic film, or a sensor such as a scintillator attached to a charge-coupled device.
Spin (physics)Spin is an intrinsic form of angular momentum carried by elementary particles, and thus by composite particles such as hadrons, atomic nuclei, and atoms. Spin should not be understood as in the "rotating internal mass" sense: spin is a quantized wave property. The existence of electron spin angular momentum is inferred from experiments, such as the Stern–Gerlach experiment, in which silver atoms were observed to possess two possible discrete angular momenta despite having no orbital angular momentum.
