How to Use excited state in a Sentence

excited state

noun
  • The excited state lasts a few seconds at most.
    — Joseph Howlett, Quanta Magazine, 15 Sep. 2025
  • The excited states and gamma rays are a fingerprint for each isotope.
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 11 Aug. 2025
  • This change means the BEC's quantum state has jumped from its ground state to its first excited state.
    — Charles D. Brown Ii, Scientific American, 16 May 2023
  • There are emission lines, which is what happens when atoms, molecules, or ions have electrons in an excited state.
    — Big Think, 19 Nov. 2025
  • There is a lowest-energy mode called the ground state, a first excited state with a little more energy, and so on.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 9 Aug. 2025
  • This keeps the rubidium atoms diffuse, slow moving and in a highly excited state.
    — Marissa Fessenden, Smithsonian, 16 Feb. 2018
  • Here, the proton can absorb energy and enter an excited state.
    — Aman Tripathi, Interesting Engineering, 13 Sep. 2025
  • These oscillations, between the excited state and the de-excited state, are what cause the emission of light.
    — Ethan Siegel, Big Think, 7 Aug. 2025
  • The other two are excited states, which also have a spin up and spin down separation, but are at a much higher energy than the ground states.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 20 Sep. 2018
  • To get around this problem, Devoret and colleagues employ a clever trick involving a second excited state.
    — Philip Ball, WIRED, 9 June 2019
  • The atoms in the Harvard machine serve as qubits, their on-off states being either the ground state or an excited state called a Rydberg state.
    — Quanta Magazine, 20 Mar. 2019
  • All the excess electrons knock the plasma molecules into an excited state, which then emit photons to produce that telltale glow.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 20 Aug. 2020
  • For both the excited states and the ground states, the energy difference between the two spin states is small enough that a sound vibration can flip the spin and change the qubit state.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 20 Sep. 2018
  • The quasiparticles are expected to quickly lose energy and so won't be able to transfer enough to raise a qubit from its ground state to its excited state.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 14 Dec. 2021
  • The characteristics of the UV light indicate that gases in some sections of the stream are in an excited state.
    — Erika K. Carlson, Discover Magazine, 9 Oct. 2019
  • Gamma rays are produced only when particles from these two states collide and annihilate—which means some of the dark matter must be in the excited state in the first place.
    — Paul M. Sutter, Scientific American, 6 May 2026
  • The double excited state decays by electron emission after a few femtoseconds, producing a higher charge state.
    — Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 28 Nov. 2025
  • Each wavelength generates a different excited state.
    — Joseph Howlett, Quanta Magazine, 15 Sep. 2025
  • The first step was to determine exactly how much energy is needed to push the thorium-229 nucleus into its excited state.
    — Andrei Derevianko, The Conversation, 14 Apr. 2026
  • The system transitions by passing through a mixture of the excited state and ground state, a quantum phenomenon known as superposition.
    — Eleni Petrakou, Scientific American, 29 Dec. 2020
  • The process repeats itself, generating a second annihilator in the triplet excited state.
    — Tracy H. Schloemer, IEEE Spectrum, 19 Sep. 2023
  • This brief interval only lasts only a few femtoseconds, which is approximately one quadrillionth of a second, and can lead to the formation of a rare doubly excited state.
    — Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 28 Nov. 2025
  • Vilke said that people in Prude’s excited state often die with or without restraint, and that being restrained from further exertion had actually helped him.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 2 Oct. 2021
  • When cosmic rays — including, in part, plain old protons from the Sun’s solar wind — strike the Moon, the recoil from those heavy elements knocks them into an excited state.
    — Ethan Siegel, Big Think, 4 Sep. 2025
  • Dark matter particles scatter off one another; some get boosted into the excited state, annihilate and produce gamma rays.
    — Paul M. Sutter, Scientific American, 6 May 2026
  • The researchers prepared several initial configurations of ground and excited states.
    — Quanta Magazine, 20 Mar. 2019
  • Its nucleus possesses an unusually low-energy excited state that can be reached using ultraviolet laser light.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 13 June 2026
  • At first, the ions will vibrate in an excited state, but diode lasers like those found in DVD players will be used to gradually scatter away their extra kinetic energy.
    — Quanta Magazine, 25 Apr. 2013
  • Devoret and colleagues wanted to watch a single artificial atom jump between its lowest-energy (ground) state and an energetically excited state.
    — Philip Ball, WIRED, 9 June 2019
  • The minimum vibration amplitude is known as the ground state, with excited states existing sequentially with an increase in vibration and energy levels.
    — Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering, 8 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'excited state.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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