Matter waves, discovered by de Broglie, are the wave-particle nature of all matter. The wavelength of matter is very small and barely perceptible. De Broglie’s theory was confirmed in 1927 when scientists fired slow electrons at a crystalline nickel target, demonstrating wave-like characteristics.
Matter waves, also called de Broglie waves, are the wave nature of all matter, including the atoms that make up your body. One of the first and most important discoveries of quantum physics is that electrons have a dual wave-particle nature. It soon became apparent that all matter has this dual nature, but since conventional matter has a high momentum with respect to electrons, the wavelength of matter waves is very small and in most cases barely perceptible. For example, the wavelength of matter that makes up a person is of the order of 10-35 meters, much smaller than what can be observed using current measurement technologies.
The concept of matter waves was first clarified by the French physicist Louis de Broglie, who was extending the early theories proposed by Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Neils Bohr. Bohr primarily studied the quantum behavior of hydrogen atoms, while de Broglie sought to extend these ideas to determine a wavelength equation for all matter. De Broglie elaborated on a theory and presented it in his 1924 doctoral thesis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1929. This was the first case in which the Nobel Prize was awarded for a doctoral thesis.
Equations known as de Broglie relations describe the dual wave-particle nature of all matter. These relations state that a particle’s wavelength is inversely proportional to its momentum (mass times velocity), and its frequency is proportional to its kinetic energy, which is a frame-dependent (relative) value. Therefore, low momentum particles, such as electrons at room temperature, have a de Broglie wavelength of about 8 nanometers. Particles with even lower momentum, such as helium atoms at temperatures of a few nanoKelvins, could have matter waves with wavelengths down to a few microns long. Under such unusual conditions, the realities of the quantum world are almost brought into a macro-scale realm.
De Broglie’s theories of matter waves were confirmed in 1927, when Bell Labs scientists Lester Germer and Clinton Davisson fired slow electrons at a crystalline nickel target. The resulting diffraction pattern demonstrated wave-like characteristics of electrons, similar to those known to be displayed by photons such as those in X-rays. Matter waves could only be observed in this case because the electrons used to produce them had very low momentum . Since 1927, the wave nature of various other elementary particles has been empirically demonstrated.
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