Lifeboat Foundation

“Our research is inspired by the idea that unconventional superconductivity usually emerges in proximity to magnetism,” Xiang said. “In particular, for copper-based and iron-based high-temperature superconductors, many of the proposed superconducting pairing mechanisms are closely connected to magnetism; moreover, the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity may give birth to more peculiar phases of matter, including the pair-density-wave (PDW) order with a spatially oscillating superconducting order parameter and finite-momentum pairing which has been an intense focus of research recently.”

The EuO/KTO heterostructure examined by Xiang and his colleagues exhibits a strong ferromagnetic proximity effect elicited by the EuO overlayer. This effect makes it an ideal platform to study unconventional superconductivity.

“The first report on the superconductivity at the EuO/KTO interface was published in 2021, focusing on the KTO (111) interface,” Xiang said. “We have since worked on the EuO/KTO (110) interface (considering its improved interface quality), at which we revealed the emergence of two-dimensional superconductivity in a previous paper.”

Operating at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) since 2022, the FASER experiment is designed to search for extremely weakly interacting particles. Such particles are predicted by many theories beyond the Standard Model that are attempting to solve outstanding problems in physics such as the nature of dark matter and the matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe.

Researchers are developing a technique that uses the special synchrotron X-ray light from the Swiss Light Source SLS to non-destructively digitize recordings from high-value historic audio tapes—including treasures from the Montreux Jazz Festival archive, such as a rare recording of the King of the Blues, B.B. King.

Magnetic tapes have almost completely disappeared from our lives and now only enjoy a nostalgic niche existence. However, significant quantities of these analog magnetic media are still stored in the archives of sound studios, radio and TV stations, museums, and private collections worldwide. Digitizing these tapes is an ongoing challenge as well as a race against time, as the tapes degrade and eventually become unplayable.

Sebastian Gliga, physicist at PSI and expert in nanomagnetism, and his team are developing a method to non-destructively digitize degraded audio tapes in the highest quality using X-ray light. To achieve this goal, they have been collaborating with the Swiss National Sound Archives, which has produced custom-made reference recordings and provided audio engineering know-how. Now, a partnership with the Montreux Jazz Digital Project will help to further develop and test the method.

The diffraction of light is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature where waves spread out as they propagate. This spreading of light beams during propagation limits the efficient transmission of energy and information. Therefore, scientists have endeavored to suppress diffraction effects to better maintain the shape and direction of light beams.

Professor Jiyun Kim and his team at the Department of Material Science and Engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) have developed a pioneering technology capable of identifying human emotions in real time. This cutting-edge innovation is set to revolutionize various industries, including next-generation wearable systems that provide services based on emotions.

Understanding and accurately extracting emotional information has long been a challenge due to the abstract and ambiguous nature of human affects such as emotions, moods, and feelings. To address this, the research team has developed a multi-modal human emotion recognition system that combines verbal and non-verbal expression data to efficiently utilize comprehensive emotional information.

Scientists at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have introduced a groundbreaking concept known as “supercritical coupling,” which significantly boosts the efficiency of photon upconversion. This innovation not only overturns existing paradigms but also opens a new direction in the control of light emission.

Photon upconversion, the process of converting low-energy photons into higher-energy ones, is a crucial technique with broad applications, ranging from super-resolution imaging to advanced photonic devices. Despite considerable progress, the quest for efficient photon upconversion has faced challenges due to inherent limitations in the irradiance of lanthanide-doped nanoparticles and the critical coupling conditions of optical resonances.

The concept of “supercritical coupling” plays a pivotal role in addressing these challenges. This fundamentally new approach, proposed by a research team led by Professor LIU Xiaogang from the NUS Department of Chemistry and his collaborator, Dr Gianluigi ZITO from the National Research Council of Italy, leverages on the physics of “bound states in the continuum” (BICs). BICs are phenomena that enable light to be trapped in open structures with theoretically infinite lifetimes, surpassing the limits of critical coupling. These phenomena are different from the usual behavior of light.

University of Copenhagen team contributes to an Antarctic large-scale experiment striving to find out if gravity also exists at the quantum level; An extraordinary particle able to travel undisturbed through space seems to hold the answer.

Several thousand sensors distributed over a square kilometer near the South Pole are tasked with answering one of the large outstanding questions in physics: does quantum gravity exist? The sensors monitor neutrinos – particles with no electrical charge and almost without mass – arriving at the Earth from outer space. A team from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), University of Copenhagen, has contributed to developing the method that exploits neutrino data to reveal if quantum gravity exists.

“If as we believe, quantum gravity does indeed exist, this will contribute to unite the current two worlds in physics. Today, classical physics describes the phenomena in our normal surroundings such as gravity, while the atomic world can only be described using quantum mechanics. The unification of quantum theory and gravitation remains one of the most outstanding challenges in fundamental physics. It would be very satisfying if we could contribute to that end,” says Tom Stuttard, Assistant Professor at NBI.

Researchers using Murriyang, CSIRO ’s Parkes radio telescope, have detected unusual radio pulses from a previously dormant star with a powerful magnetic field.

New results published today (April 8) in Nature Astronomy describe radio signals from magnetar XTE J1810-197 behaving in complex ways.

Continue reading “Magnetic Awakening: Unusual Radio Pulses Detected From a Previously Dormant Star” »

BREAD’s innovative approach to dark matter detection uses a coaxial “dish” antenna to scan for mysterious particles.

One of the great mysteries of modern science is dark matter. We know dark matter exists thanks to its effects on other objects in the cosmos, but we have never been able to directly see it. And it’s no minor thing—currently, scientists think it makes up about 85% of all the mass in the universe.

A new experiment by a collaboration led by the University of Chicago and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, known as the Broadband Reflector Experiment for Axion Detection or BREAD, has released its first results in the search for dark matter in a study published in Physical Review Letters. Though they did not find dark matter, they narrowed the constraints for where it might be and demonstrated a unique approach that may speed up the search for the mysterious substance, at relatively little space and cost.