Category: Physics

Spintronics is a field garnering immense attention for its range of potential advantages for conventional electronics. These include reducing power consumption, high-speed operation, non-volatility, and the potential for new functionalities.

For over a decade, the CMS Collaboration, a large team of researchers based at different institutes worldwide, has been analyzing data collected at the Compact Muon Solenoid, a general-purpose particle detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This large-scale international scientific collaboration has been trying to observe various elusive physical phenomena, including exotic particles and dark matter candidates.

By modifying a refrigerator commonly used in both research and industry, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have drastically reduced the time and energy required to cool materials to within a few degrees above absolute zero.

The U.S. nuclear physics community is preparing to build the electron–ion collider (EIC), a flagship facility for probing the properties of matter and the strong nuclear force that holds matter together. The EIC will allow scientists to study how nucleons (protons and neutrons) arise from the complex interactions of quarks and gluons.

In the nine decades since humans first produced fusion reactions, only a few fusion technologies have demonstrated the ability to make a thermal fusion plasma with electron temperatures hotter than 10 million degrees Celsius, roughly the temperature of the core of the sun. Zap Energy’s unique approach, known as a sheared-flow-stabilized Z pinch, has now joined those rarefied ranks, far exceeding this plasma temperature milestone in a device that is a fraction of the scale of other fusion systems.

A team of scientists has developed a method that harnesses the structure of light to twist and tweak the properties of quantum materials. Their results, published today in Nature, pave the way for advancements in next generation quantum electronics, quantum computing and information technology.

The idea that the universe is expanding dates from almost a century ago. It was first put forward by Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaître (1894–1966) in 1927 and confirmed observationally by American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) two years later. Hubble observed that the redshift in the electromagnetic spectrum of the light received from celestial objects was directly proportional to their distance from Earth, which meant that bodies farther away from Earth were moving away faster and the universe must be expanding.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have developed a new way to create quantum memory: A small drum can store data sent with light in its sonic vibrations, and then forward the data with new light sources when needed again. The results demonstrate that mechanical memory for quantum data could be the strategy that paves the way for an ultra-secure internet with incredible speeds.

Scientists used a neural network, a type of brain-inspired machine learning algorithm, to sift through large volumes of particle collision data. Particle physicists are tasked with mining this massive and growing store of collision data for evidence of undiscovered particles. In particular, they’re searching for particles not included in the Standard Model of particle physics, our current understanding of the universe’s makeup that scientists suspect is incomplete.

Researchers at the University of Würzburg have developed a method that can improve the performance of quantum resistance standards. It’s based on a quantum phenomenon called Quantum Anomalous Hall effect.

In a significant milestone for quantum communication technology, an experiment has demonstrated how networks can be leveraged to combat disruptive ‘noise’ in quantum communications.

Quantum computers, systems that process and store information leveraging quantum mechanical phenomena, could eventually outperform classical computers on numerous tasks. Among other things, these computers could allow researchers to tackle complex optimization problems, speed up drug discovery and better protect users against cyber-security threats.

CERN’s Neutrino Platform houses a prototype of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) known as ProtoDUNE, which is designed to test and validate the technologies that will be applied to the construction of the DUNE experiment in the United States.

Many advances in structural science since the 1970s were made by probing materials with synchrotron radiation: that is, high energy X-rays generated through accelerating high-energy electrons. The latest generation of such sources, X-ray free electron lasers (XFEL), are far more powerful than their predecessors but are only accessible to international consortia and a few rich countries because of their high cost.

Once a particle of matter, always a particle of matter. Or not. Thanks to a quirk of quantum physics, four known particles made up of two different quarks—such as the electrically neutral D meson composed of a charm quark and an up antiquark—can spontaneously oscillate into their antimatter partners and vice versa.

The BESIII collaboration have reported the observation of an anomalous line shape around ppbar mass threshold in the J/ψ→γ3(π+π-) decay, which indicates the existence of a ppbar bound state. The paper was published online in Physical Review Letters.

The world ends on Oct. 23, 2077, in a series of radioactive explosions—at least in the world of “Fallout,” a post-apocalyptic video game series that has now been adapted into a blockbuster TV show on Amazon’s Prime Video.

A new study by scientists from Japan explores the propagation of quantum information within interacting boson systems like Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), revealing the potential for accelerated transmission unlike previously thought.

Optical sensors serve as the backbone of numerous scientific and technological endeavors, from detecting gravitational waves to imaging biological tissues for medical diagnostics. These sensors use light to detect changes in the properties of the environment they’re monitoring, including chemical biomarkers and physical properties like temperature. A persistent challenge in optical sensing has been enhancing sensitivity to detect faint signals amid noise.

Rice University physicists have discovered a phase-changing quantum material—and a method for finding more like it—that could potentially be used to create flash-like memory capable of storing quantum bits of information, or qubits, even when a quantum computer is powered down.

The detection of gravitational waves stands as one of the most significant achievements in modern physics. In 2017, gravitational waves from the merger of a binary neutron star were detected for the first time which uncovered crucial information about our universe, from the origin of short gamma-ray bursts to the formation of heavy elements.

The rapid progress of quantum simulators is now enabling them to study problems that before have been limited to the domain of theoretical physics and numerical simulation. A team of researchers at Google Quantum AI and their collaborators showed this novel capability by studying dynamics in 1D quantum magnets, specifically chains of spin-1⁄2 particles.

A team of computer engineers from quantum computer maker Quantinuum, working with computer scientists from Microsoft, has found a way to greatly reduce errors when running experiments on a quantum computer. The combined group has published a paper describing their work and results on the arXiv preprint server.

Versatility and miniaturization of imaging systems are of great importance in today’s information society. Microscopic imaging techniques have always been indispensable for scientific research and disease diagnosis in the biomedical field, which is also stepping towards the integration, portable, and multi-functions.