Atomic, molecular, and optical physics Atomic, molecular, and optical physics Atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO) is the study of matter-matter and light-matter interactions; at the scale of one or a few atoms and energy scales around several electron volts. The three areas are closely interrelated. AMO theory includes classical, semi-classical and quantum treatments. Typically, the theory and applications of emission, absorption, scattering of electromagnetic radiation (light) from excited atoms and molecules, analysis of spectroscopy, generation of lasers and masers, and the optical properties of matter in general, fall into these categories. Atomic physics is the subfield of AMO that studies atoms as an isolated
Discovery of the neutron also measured how the new radiation impacted the atoms of various gases. He found that the new radiation consisted of not gamma rays, but uncharged particles with about the same mass as the proton. These particles were neutrons. Chadwick won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery in 1935. The year 1932 was later referred to as the "annus mirabilis" for nuclear physics in the Cavendish Laboratory, with discoveries of the neutron, artificial nuclear disintegration by the Cockcroft–Walton particle accelerator, and the positron. Given the problems of the "proton–electron model", it was quickly accepted that the atomic nucleus is