Scientists use quantum entangled light for a new form of microscopy able to detect signals normally hidden by quantum noise. The Science Lasers are often used to look at objects in microscopes. But even the best laser has “quantum noise” that makes a picture blurry and hides the details. This in turn results in measurements that are less precise than scientists need. Researchers have designed a new type of microscope that uses squeezed light to reduce measurement uncertainty. Unlike today’s…

Researchers at TU Darmstadt are using HPC at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre to develop a new approach for modelling turbulence in fluid flows. From designing new airplane wings to better understanding how fuel sprays ignite in a combustion engine, researchers have long been interested in better understanding how chaotic, turbulent motions impact fluid flows under a variety of conditions. Despite decades of focused research on the topic, physicists still consider a fundamental understanding of turbulence statistics to be among the…

The improvement of spectroscopy measurements. Several years ago, physicists from the Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies and the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw designed and built the first quantum memory in Poland, which was further developed into a quantum processor. “Our processor is based on a cloud of cold atoms. They can efficiently store and process information from light,” describes Dr Michal Parniak, leader of the Quantum-Optical Devices Laboratory. In an article recently published in “Nature Communications”,…

Research team from the University of Tübingen encounters new type of star with unusual properties – possibly two white dwarfs which have merged. Astronomers from the Universities of Tübingen and Potsdam have discovered a new type of star. While hunting for “hot stars” with the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, the team came across stars with unusual properties. While normal stellar surfaces are composed of hydrogen and helium, these stars, found under the direction of Professor Klaus Werner of the…

Atoms form a kagome pattern A kagome pattern is composed of three shifted regular triangular lattices. As a result, the kagome lattice is a regular pattern composed of stars of David. It is a common Japanese basket pattern which is where its name derives from. In condensed matter physics, materials crystallizing in a kagome lattice have first gained significant attention in the early 90’s. Until 2018, when FeSn as the first kagome metal was found, correlated electronic states in kagome…

New world record: KATRIN experiment limits neutrino mass with unprecedented precision. Neutrinos are arguably the most fascinating elementary particle in our universe. In cosmology they play an important role in the formation of large-scale structures, while in particle physics their tiny but non-zero mass sets them apart, pointing to new physics phenomena beyond our current theories. Without a measurement of the mass scale of neutrinos our understanding of the universe will remain incomplete. This is the challenge the international KATRIN…

Scientists discover that triggering superconductivity with a flash of light involves the same fundamental physics that are at work in the more stable states needed for devices, opening a new path toward producing room-temperature superconductivity. Much like people can learn more about themselves by stepping outside of their comfort zones, researchers can learn more about a system by giving it a jolt that makes it a little unstable – scientists call this “out of equilibrium” – and watching what happens…

New study confirms decades of indirect evidence for debris from disintegrating planets hurtling into white dwarfs across the galaxy University of Warwick sees X-rays from planetary debris heated to a million degrees as it falls onto the dead core of its host star The moment that debris from destroyed planets impacts the surface of a white dwarf star has been observed for the first time by astronomers at the University of Warwick. They have used X-rays to detect the rocky…

Keeping the balance between quality, production efficiency and costs has always been difficult in the manufacturing of precision optics. To make manufacturing data usable for these purposes by creating a digital twin along the production chain for quick optimization is therefore the goal of the “EverPro” research project at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT in Aachen. The Aachen researchers have now published their findings on the development and implementation of a data structure that can fully describe digital…

The energy transport between atoms and molecules is the basis of all life. Such transport is based on interatomic forces known as the dipole-dipole interaction. Prof. Dr Herwig Ott’s research group at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern (TUK) has now succeeded in reproducing such a transport mechanism in a disordered system. For this purpose, the researchers experimentally observed the quantum mechanical interaction between different Rydberg atoms. This allowed them to understand the influence of disorder on the distribution and mobility of the…

Magnetometers measure the direction, strength or relative changes of magnetic fields, at a specific point in space and time. Employed in many research areas, magnetometers can help doctors to see the brain through medical imaging, or archaeologists to reveal underground treasures without excavating the ground. Some magnetic fields of great interest, for example those produced by the brain, are extraordinarily weak, a billion times weaker than the field of the Earth, and therefore, extremely sensitive magnetometers are required to detect…

Researchers from the Cavendish Laboratory have modelled a quantum walk of identical particles that can change their fundamental character by simply hopping across a domain wall in a one-dimensional lattice. Their findings, published as a Letter in Physical Review Research, open up a window to engineer and control new kinds of collective motion in the quantum world. All known fundamental particles fall in two groups: either a fermion (“matter particle”) or a boson (“force carrier”), depending on how their state…

International research project confirms possibility for attacks on touchscreens. Usually, an action by the user, such as accidentally clicking on a link, is required to install malware on a smartphone. However, scientists at TU Darmstadt and Zhejiang University have now succeeded in remotely controlling smartphones by imitating touches on the touchscreen. In an international research project, scientists at the System Security Lab of TU Darmstadt and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou managed, for the first time, to perform targeted attacks on…

European joint experiment prepares transition to large-scale ITER project. European scientists have achieved a major success on the road to energy production through fusion plasmas: They produced stable plasmas with 59 megajoules of energy output at the world’s largest fusion facility, JET, in Culham near Oxford, UK. The team, which also includes researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), used the fuel of future fusion power plants. These were the first experiments of their kind in the…

Whether for use in cybersecurity, gaming or scientific simulation, the world needs true random numbers, but generating them is harder than one might think. But a group of Brown University physicists has developed a technique that can potentially generate millions of random digits per second by harnessing the behavior of skyrmions — tiny magnetic anomalies that arise in certain two-dimensional materials. Their research, published in Nature Communications, reveals previously unexplored dynamics of single skyrmions, the researchers say. Discovered around a…

Largest-ever simulations suggest flickering powered by magnetic ‘reconnection’. Researchers at the Flatiron Institute and their collaborators found that breaking and reconnecting magnetic field lines near the event horizon release energy from a black hole’s magnetic field, accelerating particles that generate intense flares. Black holes aren’t always in the dark. Astronomers have spotted intense light shows shining from just outside the event horizon of supermassive black holes, including the one at our galaxy’s core. However, scientists couldn’t identify the cause of…