The specular reflectivity of slow, metastable neon atoms from a silicon surface was found to increase markedly when the flat surface was replaced by a grating structure with parallel narrow ridges. For a surface with ridges that have a sufficiently narrow top, the reflectivity was found to increase more than two orders of magnitude at the incident angle θ of 10 mRad from the surface. The slope ...

We analyze the properties of a dynamic color-spreading display created by adding narrow colored flanks to rigidly moving black lines where these lines fall in the interior of a stationary virtual disk. This recently introduced display (Wollschläger et al, 2001 Perception 30 1423-1426) induces the perception of a colored transparent disk bounded by strong illusory contours. It provides a link be...

Neutral ytterbium atoms embedded in solid neon qualitatively retain the structure of free atoms. Despite the atom-solid interaction, the 6s6p ³P(0) level is found to remain metastable with its lifetimes determined to be in the range of ten to hundreds of seconds. The atomic population can be almost completely transferred between the ground level and the metastable level via optical excitation a...

A new visual illusion is presented. When two neon-coloured illusory bands overlap each other, the filling-in at the region of overlap is perceived as different from those of the overlapping bands, resulting in an additional illusory shape at the region of overlap. An experiment with ten naïve participants was performed to measure the illusory percept. The results show that illusory surfaces may...

Context. The most recent determination of the solar chemical composition by Asplund et al. (2005), using time-dependent, 3D hydrodynamical model of the solar atmosphere, exhibits a significant decrease on C, N, O abundances compared to their previous values. Solar models that use these new abundances are not consistent with helioseismological determinations of the sound speed profile, the surfa...

We report a measurement of the electron temperature in a plasma generated by a high-intensity laser focused into a jet of neon. The 15 eV electron temperature is determined using an analytic solution of the plasma equations assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium, initially developed for ultracold neutral plasmas. We show that this analysis method accurately reproduces more sophisticated plasm...

The influence of light environment on the growth and nutrition of normal rabbits was studied by comparing the weight curves of animals living under different environmental conditions for periods of 4 to 8 months and the effects of change from one environment to another. Prolonged exposure to neon light was compared with confinement in the dark and exposure to diffuse, filtered sunlight of varyi...

Recently Cederbaum et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 4778 (1997)]] predicted a new decay channel of excited atoms and molecules termed interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD). In ICD the deexcitation energy is transferred via virtual photon exchange to a neighboring atom, which releases it by electron emission. We report on an experimental observation of ICD in 2s ionized neon dimers. The process is unamb...