Lifeboat Foundation

In the 1880s Heinrich Hertz discovered that a spark jumping between two pieces of metal emits a flash of light – rapidly oscillating electromagnetic waves – which can be picked up by an antenna. To honour his groundbreaking work, the unit of frequency was named “Hertz” in 1930. Hertz’s findings were later used by Guglielmo Marconi (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1909) to transmit information over long distances creating radiocommunication and revolutionizing wireless telegraphy – shaping the modern world until today.

Scientists from the Department of Physics and the Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy (RUN), University of Regensburg, have now been able to directly observe a quantum version of Hertz’s spark jumping between just two atoms by measuring the oscillogram of the light it emits with temporal precision faster than a single oscillation cycle of the lightwave. This new signal enabled achieving a long-sought goal: atomic spatial resolution in all-optical microscopy.

As an unprecedented communication channel with the quantum world, this signal could be crucial for the development of super-fast quantum technologies as it gives new insights into the processes happening on lengthscales of single atoms and timescales faster than a trillionth of a second.

The paper is published in the journal Physical Review X.

In the world of quantum computing and quantum simulation technology, there is a fundamental challenge when using neutral atoms: The lifetime of Rydberg atoms, which are the building blocks for quantum computing, is limited. But there is a promising solution: circular Rydberg states.

For the first time, the research team has succeeded in generating and capturing circular Rydberg atoms of an alkaline-earth metal in an array of optical tweezers.

We discuss a perturbative and non-instantaneous reheating model, adopting a generic post-inflationary scenario with an equation of state w. In particular, we explore the Higgs boson-induced reheating, assuming that it is achieved through a cubic inflaton-Higgs coupling ϕ|H|2. In the presence of such coupling, the Higgs doublet acquires a ϕ-dependent mass and a non-trivial vacuum–expectation–value that oscillates in time and breaks the Standard Model gauge symmetry. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the non-standard cosmologies and the inflaton-induced mass of the Higgs field modify the radiation production during the reheating period. This, in turn, affects the evolution of a thermal bath temperature, which has remarkable consequences for the ultraviolet freeze-in dark matter production.

In this study, graduate student Keito Kobayashi and Professor Shunsuke Fukami from Tohoku University, along with Dr. Kerem Camsari from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and their colleagues, developed a near-future heterogeneous version of a probabilistic computer tailored for executing probabilistic algorithms and facile manufacturing.

“Our constructed prototype demonstrated that excellent computational performance can be achieved by driving pseudo random number generators in a deterministic CMOS circuit with physical random numbers generated by a limited number of stochastic nanomagnets,” says Fukami. “Specifically speaking, a limited number of probabilistic bits (p-bits) with a stochastic magnetic tunnel junction (s-MTJ), should be manufacturable with a near-future integration technology.”

The researchers also clarified that the final form of the spintronics probabilistic computer, primarily composed of s-MTJs, will yield a four-order-of-magnitude reduction in area and a three-order-of-magnitude reduction in energy consumption compared to the current CMOS circuits when running probabilistic algorithms.

A research team led by Dr. Serge Krasnokutski from the Astrophysics Laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy at the University of Jena had already demonstrated that simple peptides can form on cosmic dust particles. However, it was previously assumed that this would not be possible if molecular ice, which covers the dust particle, contains water—which is usually the case.

Now the team, in collaboration with the University of Poitiers, France, has discovered that the presence of water molecules is not a major obstacle for the formation of peptides on such dust particles. The researchers report on their finding in the journal Science Advances.

Chemistry in the icy vacuum “We have replicated conditions similar to those in outer space in a vacuum chamber, also adding substances that occur in so-called molecular clouds,” explains Krasnokutski. These substances include ammonia, atomic carbon, and carbon monoxide. “Thus, all the chemical elements needed for simple peptides are present,” adds the physicist.

Earth’s magnetic field plays a key role in making our planet habitable. The protective bubble over the atmosphere shields the planet from solar radiation, winds, cosmic rays and wild swings in temperature.

However, Earth’s magnetic field almost collapsed 591 million years ago, and this change, paradoxically, may have played a pivotal role in the blossoming of complex life, new research has found.

“In general, the field is protective. If we had not had a field early in Earth history water would have been stripped from the planet by the solar wind (a stream of energized particles flowing from the sun toward Earth),” said John Tarduno, a professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester in New York and senior author of the new study.

A particle-beam-generating method—called wakefield acceleration—uses proton bunches, which can fragment into high-density filaments as a result of their interactions with plasma, new experiments show.

Superradiant atoms offer a groundbreaking method for measuring time with an unprecedented level of precision. In a recent study published by the scientific journal Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Copenhagen present a new method for measuring the time interval, seconds, that overcomes some of the limitations that even today’s most advanced atomic clocks encounter. This advancement could have broad implications in areas such as space exploration, volcanic monitoring, and GPS systems.

The second, which is the most precisely defined unit of measurement, is currently measured by atomic clocks in different places around the world that together tell us what time it is. Using radio waves, atomic clocks continuously send signals that synchronize our computers, phones, and watches.

Oscillations are the key to keeping time. In a grandfather clock, these oscillations are from a pendulum’s swinging from side to side every second, while in an atomic clock, it is a laser beam that corresponds to an energy transition in strontium and oscillates about a million billion times per second.

Argonne National Laboratory scientists have used anomaly detection in the ATLAS collaboration to search for new particles, identifying a promising anomaly that could indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Scientists used a neural network, a type of brain-inspired machine learning algorithm, to sift through large volumes of particle collision data in a study that marks the first use of a neural network to analyze data from a collider experiment.

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.