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
Ugo Fano Fano spent 1936–37 with Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig. In 1939, he married Camilla Lattes, also known as "Lilla", a teacher who would collaborate with him in a well-known book on atomic and molecular physics, "Physics of Atoms and Molecules" (1959). Appendix III of this book presents an elementary description of the collision of two charged particles, which was used by Richard Feynman in lectures that have been published as "". An expanded version of this book was subsequently published as "Basic Physics of Atoms and Molecules" (1972). Later that year, he immigrated to the United States due to increasing antisemitic