Talk:Rydberg matter

message: It is worth pointing out that most of the atomic physics community does not share the interpretations described in this article. That community does not find the "Rydberg matter hypothesis" compelling or plausible. Some evidence of these doubts in the community can be deduced from the record of citations, which, if you look them up, are almost all self-citations, with the non-self-citations expressing strong doubts about this research credibility in nearly all cases.  It seems important, at the very least, for this skepticism to be pointed out somewhere in this article.--QMlad (talk) 00:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The research is questionable

message: The comment above tells more about the person giving the comment than he or she realizes... It also demonstrates a strange neglect of the scientific process which relies on peer-reviewed published evidence and not on "common belief". The comment above clearly does not follow the talk page guidelines. 
My first reflection on this type of comment to the research on Rydberg Matter that I have been involved in for more than 20 years is that Rydberg Matter is not atomc physics at all but cluster physics, chemical physics and condensed matter (metal) physics, and thus that few members of the atomic physics community probably have anything valuable to say on this subject. To make a simple analogy, the atomic physicist is like a very skilled carpenter making a very efficient boat in a fleet of vessels. However, the use of the boat for example in a sea-battle or in a race or whatever use it is applied to is far beyond the horizon of the carpenter. As a chemist, I am often forced to observe a similar analogy in the interaction with atomic physicists, since they believe deeply that they can apply atomic physics to molecules and the condensed phase with no adaption of their methods or theories. As most other scientists know, this is a false approach. As a simple example, I can mention that the most common argument against the existence of Rydberg Matter is that there are no Rydberg series in the spectrum of Rydberg Matter, that is, no highly excited electrons moving between different principal quantum numbers n around the ion cores in the atoms in Rydberg Matter. This may seem as a clear argument against Rydberg Matter which should be formed by the condensation of Rydberg states. 
However, this argument is not only false but false in such a spectacular way. My first question is if there is a sodium spectrum (absorption or emission) to be observed from a piece of solid or liquid sodium metal (convenient since alkali atoms most easily form Rydberg Matter)? I believe that many atomic physicists would answer yes to this question but such an answer is of course wrong, since the outermost electrons in the Na stoms are involved in the metallic bonds in the sodium metal and thus in entirely different levels than in the Na atom. My second question is then if it is possible to observe the hydrogen atom spectrum (possibly even as Rydberg series) in absorption or emission from hydrogen molecules. I will not speculate on the answer to this question from any atomic physicist, but the answer is of course no, since the electrons are in entirely different quantum mechanical levels, giving the covalent bond between the atoms, and thus forming the hydrogen molecule. 
Now, I just want to point out that the outermost electrons in the atoms forming the Rydberg Matter are delocalized in metallic states which give the metallic-type bonding in the Rydberg Matter clusters. Thus, they are not able to give any Rydberg series since they do not belong to just one atom but are delocalized over the whole cluster, or even over the whole stack of clusters which is easily formed. Thus, they form states much more resembling delocalized molecular orbitals in large polyatomic conjugated or aromatic molecules. These facts are well understood, but are possibly not considered relevant within the field of atomic physics.
Of course, our research in this field has not stopped at this fundamental understanding. Even if the outermost electrons are involved in metallic delocalized bonds, the inner electrons in the atoms in the Rydberg Matter are still available for experimentation, and they should indeed be able to exist in Rydberg orbits and should be able to be observed as such. Of course, no full Rydberg series are expected for these inner electrons, but the Rydberg levels should be observable. As shown in a few papers, this is indeed possible. Direct experimental proof is given in "Stimulated emission spectroscopy of Rydberg Matter: observation of Rydberg orbits in the core ions", Appl. Phys. B 87 (2007) 273-281; "Nuclear spin transitions in the kHz range in Rydberg Matter clusters give precise values of the internal magnetic field from orbiting Rydberg electrons", Chem. Phys. 358 (2009) 61–67. Also papers like "The diffuse interstellar band carriers in interstellar space: all intense bands calculated from He doubly excited states embedded in Rydberg Matter", Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 384 (2008) 764–774 and "Direct observation of circular Rydberg electrons in a Rydberg Matter surface layer by electronic circular dichroism", J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 19 (2007) 276206 are of direct relevance to these questions. Thus, it is shown that Rydberg electrons exist in the condensed phase Rydberg Matter. I can only regret that some individuals are not willing to study the available evidence. Holmlid (talk) 23:36, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Answer: The comment above does not follow guidelines and is unscientific 

message: Holmlid, it is clear that you are having a conflict of interest (please read this page in details, it will save you a lot of frustrations) by editing this article. Wikipedia is not the place to publish your research. Please recuse from editing this article, otherwise, I fear a edit war is upon us. This is not a comment on you or your research, it simply is that one cannot be trusted to be neutral about his own self. 
I've contacted WikiProject Physics (where several physics PhD and other expert abound) for feedback on this article. If the article is indeed neutral, then it will be found neutral. If the article isn't neutral, it will be edited and made neutral. Thus you shouldn't have anything to fear from an enhanced level of scrutiny. You are welcomed to comment on the revisions made by other editors (for example, if an important aspect is left out), but from experience, it is best to not interfere (aka revert their edits, or restore deleted material) with them. 
In the meantime, you could contribute to the project by going through WikiProject Physics' cleanup listing. There is plenty of things to edit there (divided by the type of editing that needs to be done), and your expertise will be very helpful.
Cordially. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 23:15, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  COI 

message: "Rydberg matter" seems to this reader, from a theoretical point of view, to be scientifically implausible. The claim is made that when Rydberg atoms become bound together into a condensed state the electron orbitals remain circular and of large radius. This is unlikely because the interactions between the outer orbitals, which give the binding, will inevitably mix them into extended states to produce what has commonly been known for a long time as a metal. It is also implausible that inner orbitals retain circular shape, as the thermodynamic tendency will be for the system to condense into its lowest energy state, which is a compact metallic particle with compact orbitals. Theory aside, two things concern me. First, there does not seem to be any definitive and generally accepted experimental evidence that "Rydberg matter" does actually exist. Second, most of the references in the article are to original research literature and the article reads like a paper of original research pushing the particular POV that Rydberg matter does actually exist. Because of these preconceptions of the article, an innocent reader could be misled into thinking that the subject has more mainstream acceptance than it does. This leads me to think that the topic is on the fringe and therefore not suitable for a full encyclopaedic treatment at this stage. I suggest that it be stubified, its speculative and non-mainstream nature made manifest and its references cut down to three or four. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:59, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Stubbify

message: The views expressed by [User:Xxanthippe|Xxanthippe] place (bad) theory in front of experiment and reality. This has been shown to be a false procedure in the history of science. The studies cited in the article on Rydberg Matter are almost all experimental and they show that Rydberg Matter exists and can be studied by numerous methods. If this is understandable to atomic physicists or not should not be a point to deal with for Wikipedia. The theory of Rydberg Matter is anyway well understood. Of course it is a metal, that is very clear from both theory and experiments. However, it is a metal with high-l electrons, which might help [User:Xxanthippe|Xxanthippe] to understand that it does not shrink to a normal metal with l=0. A shortening of the article on Rydberg Matter is of course feasible, as long as reality is in front of theory. Holmlid (talk) 11:14, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that, in physics, experiment always outranks theory, so the scepticism that I expressed on theoretical grounds about the existence of Rydberg matter may be ignored, if wished. What cannot be ignored, however, is the paucity of experimental evidence that Rydberg matter actually exists. The structure of bulk crystalline and amorphous condensed matter  can be identified directly by X-ray diffraction, by electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The structure of buckyballs and nanotubes is clearly observed by electron microscopy. Even the structure of graphene is on firm foundations. The same cannot be said for Rydberg matter: the evidence for it is based only on spectroscopy and speculative modelling. There does not seem to be direct observational evidence and the jury of mainstream opinion is still out. Until there is widespread acceptance of the subject, it is best to treat it as a fringe topic as I have suggested above. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:17, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Or phrased differently, we should stick to reviews and books on this topic, unless detailing history (such as Bob Smith hypothesized X in 1985). Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:22, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Theory should not dominate over reality

message: The Deuterium article has a section on "ultradense deuterium" that has all the same problems that this article has.--75.83.76.23 (talk) 21:59, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Section in [[Deuterium]] article

message: I've added the expert-subject tag, since there seems to be little evidence that the material in this article is taken seriously by anyone in the field of condensed matter physics, other than Holmlid and some cold-fusion kooks. The article should probably be deleted entirely.--207.233.87.87 (talk) 20:55, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: As you can see the article was AfD'd before but was supported by a fan club. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:46, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

text: If it it true "little evidence that the material in this article is taken seriously by anyone in the field of condensed matter physics", then by, now there should be textbooks or review articles that devote a sentence to the theory, and mention the contrary experimental evidence. Where are they?165.121.80.216 (talk) 22:19, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: expert-subject tag

message: I came across this article while looking for more general information on "radio recombination lines" than that from nrao.edu.  (An article on that subject is still needed.)  But it was disappointing to see the above comments about this article.  One of the few agreements seems to be that "experiment outranks theory".  Since the critics have not supplied references showing the supposed disagreements, why not do a rewrite that includes more explanation of experimental results?  
For instance, the introduction could say "... it was predicted around 1980... and seems to [explain, agree with, etc ...] observations [list chronologically..] ..."
The article contents, before the "Physical, Lifetime, etc sections, could start with "Observations" or "Experiments", describing generally what was measured using what methods, what results were consistent with the theory described below, and what was not or was undetermined.  I would guess most of the references are already there, you just need to add names to them to cite them earlier in the article.  This section  would also be the place for a paragraph giving new references denying any observable effect at all, if there are such articles.
For instance, did the 1980 theory explain any prior anomalous observation of any kind, or was it necessary to design specific experiments to see anything?  Hope to learn more about this subject after a rewrite!
165.121.80.61 (talk) 19:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  More discussion of experiments? 

message: There are no references papers since 2013, and no normal talk discussion centering on the usual matters of improving an article. More baffling is how there is no WP cautionary questionability-note at the top of the page of any sort, with the whole thing sounding like vixra junk-science, to the extent that it should have been deleted years ago JohndanR (talk) 03:47, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why does this article (still) exist? 

message: Is there actually an interest in seeing improvements to the article? I have a broad, general knowledge on the subject and familiarity with the papers published by Holmlid's group(s), but if the article is in a limbo just waiting to get deleted, it might not be worth the effort here. Perhaps it might be useful to identify first what other people think (as of 2020) this article needs the most.
Disclosure: I have been involved with related experimentation, but do not have published papers on the subject. Graybeard Timer (talk) 07:32, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I will make an attempt to get this article deleted as it is just and outdated advertisement of Holmlid obscure research. Unfortunately nobody that actually knows the field of Rydberg atoms has bothered to clean up and rewrite the topic in an appropriate way (which would be pointing out that its a speculative and unverified ideas from the 80s). Roeschter (talk) 12:43, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: . I think the next step is an WP:AFD. In my opinion, the easiest way to AFD an article is to install WP:TWINKLE, then in the Twinkle menu, click on XFD, and fill out the form that pops up. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks, appreciated, though I can barely suppress laughter at the Kafkaeske proceeding Wikipedia editing has become. Roeschter (talk) 21:21, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: . If I knew what that was, maybe I would laugh too ;P –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel) by Franz Kafka  Roeschter (talk) 14:44, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is an improvement still being looked upon? 

message: Please remove the comment about boson condensate. It's irrelevant. Also, please mention that this is an intermediate to polymers. That's why they said the excited outer electrons become a more stable state when binding to other molecules. 
This is a good page, though, because it describes short lived chemical reactions in an arc flash such as a krypton (neon as you know it) sign.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.133.250.254 (talk) 03:42, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello friend. Feel free to edit the article and improve it yourself. Just make sure to cite your sources. Let us know if you need help. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:29, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boson condensate, intermediate to polymers, wattage