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Category: particle physics

Proton-trapping MNene transforms ammonia production for food security and economic growth

With a new electrochemical synthesis via an electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR), achieving carbon-free ammonia production is closer to reality through work from Drs. Abdoulaye Djire and Perla Balbuena, chemical engineering professors at Texas A&M University, and graduate students David Kumar and Hao En Lai. A topic outlined in their recent paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society introduces NRR, which produces ammonia in a cleaner and simpler way by using renewable electricity.

The research branches off of the team’s previous work, where they looked further into enabling two-dimensional materials in renewable energy.

“The current process of making ammonia is energy intensive and emits a lot of carbon dioxide, so if you can make ammonia electrochemically, then you can avoid these two negative effects,” Djire said. “During the electrochemical NRR process, water provides the hydrogen atoms, which combine with nitrogen from the air to form ammonia, all powered by electricity.”

A New Probe of Nanoparticle Melting

Understanding nanoparticles is important in astrophysics and atmospheric physics and for applications like catalysts. These particles are tough to characterize, but now Vitaly Kresin of the University of Southern California and his colleagues have determined one elusive property with high accuracy. They inferred the melting point of sodium and potassium nanoparticles 7–9 nm in diameter with an accuracy of 1% [1]. They found that the melting point is about 100 K lower than in bulk samples, in agreement with less-precise data on other types of nanoparticles of this size and with theoretical predictions. The technique could potentially provide a new way to probe other properties of nanoparticles having a wide range of sizes.

Metal nanoparticles are known to melt at lower temperatures than bulk samples, but the theory needed to predict the melting point has significant uncertainties. Experiments also face various challenges, such as the tendency of electron microscopes to melt nanoparticles. Kresin and his colleagues suspected that the work function—the energy required to remove an electron from a surface or a nanoparticle—might show some notable changes when a nanoparticle melts, given the major structural rearrangements involved.

Their recently developed setup [2] uses a beam of temperature-controlled nanoparticles targeted by an adjustable-wavelength, monochromatic light source. When the photons eject electrons, the team detects the charged particles. For both sodium and potassium, the work function-versus-temperature data show a clear discontinuity and change in slope at the melting point.

Ghostly particles: Dark radiation may have masqueraded as neutrinos

New research suggests that neutrinos in the early universe may have transformed into a previously unknown form of radiation. A study from Washington University in St. Louis offers a new way to explain certain puzzling observations about how the universe evolved.

Bhupal Dev and his colleagues report the results in a paper published in Physical Review Letters. Dev is an associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences and a fellow of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, both at WashU.

Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe. Often described as ghostlike because they interact so weakly with matter, neutrinos play an important role in shaping how cosmic structures form and evolve.

NOAA’s Space Weather Mission: Protecting Artemis II Astronauts and Society

For the majority of its orbit, the moon remains outside Earth’s magnetic field and is directly exposed to the full force of the solar wind and energetic solar particles. Artemis II astronauts will therefore spend time outside this naturally occurring protective shield. Any overlap between periods of heightened solar activity and time spent beyond Earth’s magnetospheric protection could pose significant radiation risks to the crew.

NASA relies on operational space weather forecasts and warnings from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). As the nation’s official around-the-clock space weather forecasting authority, SWPC provides direct, real-time support to human spaceflight missions. Observations from NOAA’s GOES satellites and the SOLAR-1 observatory at Lagrange point 1 will provide important measurements of solar wind speed, magnetic field orientation, and the flow of hazardous, high-energy particles. These observations allow SWPC to issue timely warnings if radiation levels approach thresholds that could affect astronaut safety. During the Artemis II mission, NOAA forecasters will continuously monitor solar wind conditions and evaluate any solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or solar energetic particle events that may occur.

The Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI), Extreme Ultraviolet and X-Ray Irradiance Sensors (EXIS), Space Environment In-Situ Suite (SEISS), and Magnetometer (MAG) are specialized instruments onboard the GOES-R Series satellites that measure solar activity and changes in Earth’s magnetic field. Additionally, the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR-1) onboard GOES-19 further enhances the detection of CMEs by providing continuous real-time monitoring of the sun’s corona, improving both measurement quality and warning lead time.

Building desktop particle accelerators to unlock new realms of research

Using high-intensity lasers, researchers have taken an important step toward miniaturization of particle accelerators by demonstrating free-electron laser amplification at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths (27–50 nm), with an acceleration length of only a few millimeters. By generating high-quality, monoenergetic electron beams (i.e. beams where all the electrons have nearly the same energy), they have achieved a key milestone toward compact accelerator technologies.

The work is published in the journal Physical Review Research.

The research team led by The University of Osaka’s Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research (SANKEN) in collaboration with Kansai Institute for Photon Science (KPSI), National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), RIKEN SPring-8 Center (RSC), High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), used a technique called laser wakefield acceleration to create plasma waves that generate extremely strong accelerating electric fields, thanks to waves within the plasma that travel at almost the speed of light.

Useful quantum computers could be built with as few as 10,000 qubits, team finds

Quantum computers of the future may be closer to reality thanks to new research from Caltech and Oratomic, a Caltech-linked start-up company. Theorists and experimentalists teamed up to develop a new approach for reducing the errors that riddle today’s rudimentary quantum computers. Whereas these machines were previously thought to require millions of qubits to work properly (qubits being the quantum equivalent to 1’s and 0’s in classical computers), the new results indicate that a fully realized quantum computer could be built with as few as 10,000 to 20,000 qubits. The need for fewer qubits means that quantum computers could, in theory, be operational by the end of the decade.

The team proposes a new quantum error-correction architecture that is significantly more efficient than previous approaches. Quantum error correction is a process by which extra, redundant qubits are introduced to correct errors, or faults, enabling the ultimate goal in the field: fault-tolerant quantum computing.

The results exploit special properties of quantum computing platforms built out of neutral atoms, which serve as the qubits. Alternative platforms in development include superconducting circuits and trapped ions (ions are charged whereas neutral atoms are not). In a neutral atom system, laser beams known as optical tweezers are used to arrange atoms into qubit arrays. Manuel Endres, a professor of physics at Caltech, and his colleagues recently created the largest qubit array ever assembled, containing 6,100 trapped neutral atoms.

Gravitational waves as possible candidates for the origin of dark matter

Gravitational waves could be responsible for the production of dark matter during the early phases of our universe’s formation, according to results of a new study by Professor Joachim Kopp from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the PRISMA Cluster of Excellence in cooperation with Dr. Azadeh Maleknejad from Swansea University. Their work, published in Physical Review Letters, presents new calculations that explore a novel mechanism for the formation of dark matter through so-called stochastic gravitational waves.

In this way, they contribute to answering a fundamental question in particle physics. Planets, stars, and even life on Earth are all composed of visible matter. This type of matter only makes up about 4% of our universe. The vast majority is invisible, consisting of dark matter and dark energy. For instance, dark matter makes up about 23% of our universe.

Astrophysical observations confirm that dark matter permeates the whole universe and forms galaxies as well as the largest known structures in the cosmos. However, the particles that make up dark matter are still unknown. Many theories and ongoing experiments are looking for an answer to this open question.

Hidden features in X-rays could radically change how we measure and understand them

Hidden features uncovered in X-ray signals are set to overturn a key scientific theory and fundamentally change how X-rays are interpreted across fields of physics, chemistry, biology and materials science, new research reveals. Researchers say the discovery can help scientists measure X-rays more precisely and reliably, and improve our understanding of common materials, from battery materials to biological proteins.

X-ray science focuses on the unique energy signatures of atoms. These include the specific X-rays emitted when electrons transition into inner shells—the strongest of which are known as K-alpha lines—as well as distinct energy thresholds at which atoms begin to strongly absorb X-rays.

For more than 50 years, the entire field has relied on the assumption that a core parameter in the equation used to model X-ray absorption spectra, known as the standard XAFS equation, is fixed and does not change.

Symmetry Keeps Fermions Pure in a Noisy World

A theoretical study reveals how to control and drive a quantum system without causing its decoherence.

Quantumness is famously fragile. Decoherence, particle loss, and other dissipative processes typically destroy delicate quantum superpositions, causing open quantum systems to behave classically. This universal, inevitable fate suggests that, even when a system’s constituents are fully quantum, its nonequilibrium critical points could be described by classical universality classes. That is, the system could belong to a group whose behavior near a critical point is identical and scale invariant regardless of microscopic details. In a new theoretical study, Rohan Mittal and his collaborators at the University of Cologne in Germany have overturned this expectation for open systems of fermions [1]. They identified a particular symmetry, which, if present, blocks most of the noise channels that would ordinarily wash out quantum behavior at large scales.

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