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🔬 Mössbauer Effect Lab

Explore recoil-free gamma-ray emission and absorption in crystal lattices, and see how the Mössbauer effect enables spectroscopy precise enough to measure gravitational redshift.

Physics & Mechanics3DModerate60 FPS

This simulator visualizes why a free nucleus recoils and loses resonance energy upon gamma emission, then contrasts that with a lattice-bound nucleus whose recoil is absorbed by the entire crystal, producing sharp, essentially recoil-free emission and absorption lines suitable for ultra-precise spectroscopy.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Toggle between a free nucleus and a lattice-bound nucleus to compare their emitted photon energy spectra. Adjust the temperature slider to see how the recoil-free fraction, and therefore the sharpness of the resonance peak, changes as the lattice is cooled or heated. Use the Doppler velocity control to sweep the source past the absorber's resonance, reproducing the scanning technique used in real Mössbauer spectroscopy, and observe how the absorption dip narrows or shifts.

💡 Did You Know?

The energy resolution achievable with the Mössbauer effect is so extreme that it can, in principle, detect the tiny gravitational energy shift a photon experiences after rising or falling by just a few dozen meters near Earth's surface, exactly the effect the Pound-Rebka experiment measured in 1959 to confirm a key prediction of general relativity.

⚙ Under the hood

Explore recoil-free gamma-ray emission and absorption in crystal lattices, and see how the Mössbauer effect enables spectroscopy precise enough to measure gravitational redshift.

mossbauer effectgamma spectroscopynuclear physicsrecoil-free emissionsolid state physicsgeneral relativitypound-rebka experiment

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install