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Category: particle physics

Titanium complexes cleanly edit the core skeleton of highly stable organic compounds

Multi-titanium hydrides can selectively snip the strong structural bonds of stable organic molecules called pyridines, RIKEN researchers have shown. This discovery could guide designing catalysts for applications in multiple branches of industrial chemistry, from oil refining to the synthesis of functional organic molecules. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Pyridines are stable aromatic molecules characterized by a ring consisting of one nitrogen atom and five carbon atoms. They are a common structural motif in complex organic molecules such as pharmaceuticals. They are also a component of crude oil that needs to be removed during refining.

“The removal of nitrogen-containing impurities such as pyridines from crude oil is an important industrial process in petroleum refining,” notes Zhaomin Hou of the RIKEN Organometallic Chemistry Laboratory and the RIKEN Advanced Catalysis Research Group.

Compact vacuum ultraviolet laser may improve nanotechnology and power nuclear clocks

Physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have demonstrated a new kind of vacuum ultraviolet laser that is 100 to 1,000 times more efficient than existing technologies of its kind. The researchers say the device could one day allow scientists to observe phenomena currently out of reach for even the most powerful microscopes—such as following fuel molecules in real time as they undergo combustion, spotting incredibly small defects in nanoelectronics and more.

The new laser might also allow for practical, ultraprecise nuclear clocks that rely on an energy transition in the nuclei of thorium atoms. These long sought-after devices could, theoretically, allow researchers to robustly track time with unprecedented precision.

The group is led by physicists Henry Kapteyn and Margaret Murnane, fellows of JILA, a joint research institute between CU Boulder and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Jeremy Thurston, who earned his doctorate in physics from CU Boulder in 2024, spearheaded work on the new laser.

Heavy water expands energy potential of carbon nanotube yarns

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have developed a new electrolyte system that significantly boosts the energy-harvesting performance of twistrons, which are carbon nanotube yarns that generate electricity when repeatedly stretched. The findings could aid in the manufacturing of intelligent textiles, such as fabrics used to make spacesuits, that would power wearable electronic devices or sensors by harvesting energy from human motion.

In a study published in ACS Nano, the UT Dallas scientists and their collaborators reported that replacing conventional water with heavy water in the neutral electrolyte solution that bathes the twistrons significantly increased energy output from the yarns.

Normal water comprises hydrogen and oxygen atoms. In heavy water, the hydrogen is replaced with deuterium, a form of hydrogen that contains an added neutron in its nucleus.

Acoustic driving enables controlled condensation of light and matter on chip

An international research team led by Alexander Kuznetsov at the Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics (PDI) in Berlin has demonstrated a fundamentally new way to control the condensation of hybrid light-matter particles. Using coherent acoustic driving to dynamically reshape the energy landscape of a semiconductor microcavity, the researchers achieved deterministic steering of a macroscopic quantum state into its lowest energy configuration.

The results, published in Nature Photonics, establish a strategy for engineering nonequilibrium quantum states and open prospects for ultrafast, tunable photonic technologies.

In collaboration with long-term partners from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council CONICET and the Bariloche Atomic Center and Balseiro Institute in Argentina, the team experimentally realized a universal scheme for selectively transferring populations within a multilevel quantum system using strong time periodic modulation.

Researchers mix X-rays and optical light to track speedy electrons in materials

To unlock materials of the future, including better photocatalysts or light-switchable superconductors, researchers need to understand how the valence electrons within materials respond to light at the atomic scale. Materials are made of atoms, and an atom’s outer electrons, or valence electrons, are responsible for chemical bonding as well as a material’s thermal, magnetic, and electronic properties.

But imaging valence electrons in bulk materials is extremely difficult because valence electrons are only a small subset of a typically large pool of electrons.

Now, researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have refined a way to track valence electrons using a unique method that shines both X-rays and lasers onto a material, then tracks the frequency generated by both sources. The method allows the researchers to understand more about extremely fast-moving valence electrons, including the symmetry of their local environment.

Stacked quantum materials enable precise spin control without external magnetic fields

Spintronics—a technology that harnesses the electron’s magnetic quantum states to carry information—could pave the way for a new generation of ultra-energy-efficient electronics. Yet a major challenge has been the ability to control these delicate quantum properties with sufficient precision for practical applications. By combining different quantum materials, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have now taken a decisive step forward, achieving unprecedented control over spin phenomena. The advance opens the door to next-generation low-power data processing and memory technologies.

Data centers, cloud services, AI and connected systems account for a rapidly growing share of global energy consumption. In the quest for new, more energy-efficient technological solutions, spin electronics, or spintronics, has proven to be a new and promising approach. Instead of relying solely on the movement of electric charge, spintronics use magnetic states to carry information. More specifically, it takes advantage of a quantum property of electrons known as spin, which makes electrons behave like tiny magnets.

“Just like a compass needle, an electron’s spin can point in one of two directions—up or down. These two directions can be used to represent digital information, in the same way today’s electronics use 0s and 1s,” explains Saroj Dash, Professor of Quantum Device Physics at Chalmers University of Technology.

Chemical shifts help track molecules breaking apart in real time

When molecules fall apart, their electric charge doesn’t stay put—it rearranges as bonds stretch and break. An international team of scientists has now tracked these ultrafast changes in the small molecule fluoromethane (CH₃F). It was the first time that the Small Quantum Systems (SQS) instrument at European XFEL could deliver detailed insights into transient states during chemical reactions. The research is published in the journal Physical Review X.

These intermediate states, that only exist temporarily while the reaction is ongoing, are often the key drivers of chemistry and therefore crucial to understand. Over the long term, that kind of insight can support progress in areas such as atmospheric science (where sunlight-driven reactions and fragmentation pathways shape air chemistry), as well as the study of complex molecular systems including biomolecules and proteins, where local excitation and charge transfer can trigger structural change.

In the experiment, the researchers first triggered the reaction with an optical laser pulse. Next, they used the X-ray laser pulses that the European XFEL produces, to eject an electron from the core of either the fluorine or the carbon atom in the molecule. They measured the electron’s kinetic energy, which reveals how strongly it was bound inside the atom. That binding energy is extremely sensitive to the local electrical environment, producing so-called “chemical shifts” that act like a fingerprint of the charge distribution surrounding the atom from which the electron has been ejected.

Precisely measuring quantum signals in large spin ensembles

Quantum mechanical effects are known to be easily disrupted by disturbances from the surrounding environment, commonly referred to as noise. To minimize these disturbances, physicists often study these effects in small and carefully controlled systems, in which environmental noise can be minimized.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University set out to study quantum effects in macroscopic spin ensembles, systems comprised of large numbers of spins (spins is the intrinsic angular momentum of elementary particles). Their paper, published in Nature Physics, introduces a new approach to directly observe quantum spin fluctuations in macroscopic spin ensembles, precisely monitoring their evolution over time.

“Quantum effects are typically observed and exploited in microscopic systems, where individual qubits can be precisely controlled and measured,” Alexander O. Sushkov, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org.

3D imaging reveals messy-looking supraparticles can be nearly perfect crystals inside

Researchers at Utrecht University have quantitatively mapped the three-dimensional structure of photonic supraparticles for the first time. Supraparticles are microscopic spheres composed of thousands of smaller colloidal particles. Until now, researchers could only examine the outer surface of these structures. Using a combination of super-resolution microscopy and machine learning, the team shows that particles that appear disorganized on the outside are often almost perfectly crystalline on the inside.

The paper is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Blue morpho butterflies owe their vibrant color to the internal structure of their wings, rather than pigment. The arrangement of particles on a microscopic scale causes light to be reflected in such a way that the butterflies appear intensely blue, and that the color looks the same from every viewing angle.

How does snow gather on a roof? Simulation considers turbulence alongside snowflake size

No two snowflakes may be the same, but models that fail to take these variations into consideration often fall short when calculating the way snow accumulates on roofs. In Physics of Fluids, researchers from Harbin Institute of Technology in China modeled the way snow gathers on a roof based on snowflake size and distribution.

“In cold regions, snow load is a critical factor in structural design,” said author Qingwen Zhang. “However, traditional models often simplify snow as a uniform material with a single particle size, overlooking the natural heterogeneity of snowflake sizes and distributions.”

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