Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: particle physics – Page 8

Controlling atomic interactions in ultracold gas ‘at the push of a button’

Changing interactions between the smallest particles at the touch of a button: Quantum researchers at RPTU have developed a new tool that makes this possible. The new approach—a temporally oscillating magnetic field—has the potential to significantly expand fundamental knowledge in the field of quantum physics. It also opens completely new perspectives on the development of new materials.

Computer chips, imaging techniques such as imaging, , transistors, and : many milestones in our modern everyday world would not have been possible without the discoveries of quantum physics. What is remarkable is that it was only about a hundred years ago that physicists discovered that the world at the smallest scales cannot be explained by the laws of classical physics.

Atoms and their components, protons, neutrons, and electrons—but also light particles—sometimes exhibit physical behaviors that are unknown in the macroscopic world. To this day, the quantum world therefore holds unclear and surprising phenomena that—once understood and controllable—could revolutionize future technologies.

A new method to build more energy-efficient memory devices could lead to a sustainable data future

A research team led by Kyushu University has developed a new fabrication method for energy-efficient magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) using a new material called thulium iron garnet (TmIG) that has been attracting global attention for its ability to enable high-speed, low-power information rewriting at room temperature. The team hopes their findings will lead to significant improvements in the speed and power efficiency of high-computing hardware, such as that used to power generative AI.

The work is published in npj Spintronics.

The rapid spread of generative AI has made the power demand from data centers a global issue, creating an urgent need to improve the energy efficiency of the hardware that runs the technology.

USC engineers just made light smarter with “optical thermodynamics”

USC engineers have developed an optical system that routes light autonomously using thermodynamic principles. Rather than relying on switches, light organizes itself much like particles in a gas reaching equilibrium. The discovery could simplify and speed up optical communications and computing. It reimagines chaotic optical behavior as a tool for design rather than a limitation.

Magnetic ‘switchback’ detected near Earth for the first time

In recent years, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has given us a close-up look at the sun. Among the probe’s revelations was the presence of numerous kinks, or “switchbacks,” in magnetic field lines in the sun’s outer atmosphere. These switchbacks are thought to form when solar magnetic field lines that point in opposite directions break and then snap together, or “reconnect,” in a new arrangement, leaving telltale zigzag kinks in the reconfigured lines.

In their article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, E. O. McDougall and M. R. Argall now report observations of a switchback-shaped structure in Earth’s magnetic field, suggesting that switchbacks can also form near planets.

The researchers discovered the switchback while analyzing data from NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, which uses four Earth-orbiting satellites to study Earth’s magnetic field. They detected a twisting disturbance in the outer part of Earth’s magnetosphere—the bubble of space surrounding our planet where a cocktail of charged particles known as is pushed and pulled along Earth’s .

A new scalable approach to realize a quantum communication network based on ytterbium-171 atoms

Quantum networks, systems consisting of connected quantum computers, quantum sensors or other quantum devices, hold the potential of enabling faster and safer communications. The establishment of these networks relies on a quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, which entails a link between particles or systems, with the quantum state of one influencing the other even when they are far apart.

The atom-based qubits used to establish so far operate at visible or ultraviolet wavelength, which is not ideal for the transmission of signals over long distances via optical fibers. Converting these signals to telecom-band wavelengths, however, can reduce the efficiency of communication and introduce undesirable signals that can disrupt the link between qubits.

A research team at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led by Prof. Jacob P. Covey recently realized telecom-band wavelength quantum networking using an array of ytterbium-171 atoms. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, introduces a promising approach to realize high-fidelity entanglement between atoms and optical photons generated directly in the telecommunication band.

Researchers transmit photons from moving plane in major quantum leap

A consortium of German researchers has successfully transmitted individual photons from a moving aircraft, captured them in a mobile ground station, and verified their quantum states.

The experiment, a key part of Germany’s QuNET initiative, marks a critical step towards building a global, tap-proof quantum communication network.

The research team successfully measured various quantum channels between the aircraft and the ground, sent the light particles to a sophisticated ion trap, and tested technologies vital for quantum key distribution (QKD).

Strain engineering enhances spin readout in quantum technologies, study shows

Quantum defects are tiny imperfections in solid crystal lattices that can trap individual electrons and their “spin” (i.e., the internal angular momentum of particles). These defects are central to the functioning of various quantum technologies, including quantum sensors, computers and communication systems.

Reliably predicting and controlling the behavior of quantum defects is thus very important, as it could pave the way for the development of better performing quantum systems tailored for specific applications. A property closely linked to the dependability of quantum technologies is the so-called spin readout contrast, which essentially determines how clear it is to distinguish between two different spin states in a system.

Researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), the HUN-REN Wigner Research Center for Physics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutes recently showed that strain engineering (i.e., stretching or compressing materials) could be used to control how quantum defects behave and enhance spin readout contrast in quantum systems.

Scientists create world’s first chip that combines 2D materials with conventional silicon circuitry

For the first time, scientists have created a fully functional memory chip only a few atoms thick and integrated it into conventional chips. This advance could pave the way for more powerful and energy-efficient electronic devices.

Decades of innovation have shrunk the circuits on a computer chip so that, nowadays, engineers can pack billions of tiny components onto a single thumbnail-sized silicon wafer. But are now reaching the physical limits of how small they can go while still performing reliably. The solution is two-dimensional (2D) materials, which are materials that are just a single layer of atoms thick that can be scaled down even further and have superior electronic properties.

However, the problem with 2D materials like graphene up until now has been that only simple chips could be constructed with them, and it wasn’t easy to connect them to traditional processors. Now, in research published in the journal Nature, Chunsen Liu at Fudan University in Shanghai and his colleagues have overcome these hurdles. They successfully combined atomically thin 2D memory cells directly onto a conventional silicon chip, creating the world’s first two-dimensional silicon-based hybrid architecture chip.

Tiny engine runs hotter than the sun to probe the frontiers of thermodynamics

Scientists have created the world’s hottest engine running at temperatures hotter than those reached in the sun’s core. The team from King’s College London and collaborators believe their platform could provide an unparalleled understanding of the laws of thermodynamics on a small scale, and provide the foundation for a new, efficient way to compute how proteins fold—the subject of last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Outlined in Physical Review Letters, the engine is a very small, microscopic particle suspended at a low pressure using . This electric trap is called a Paul Trap. The researchers can exponentially increase the heat of the trapped particle by applying a noisy voltage to one of the electrodes levitating it.

While traditionally engines have been associated with motors, in science their definition is much simpler—engines convert one form of energy to . Here, that is heat to movement.

/* */