Safe human-robot collaboration… The safety of people interacting with robots has top priority, especially when humans and robots are working side by side instead of being separated from each other by safety fencing. The Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF’s web-based design tool helps companies design their cobots. The Cobot Designer helps minimize the risk of accidents and increases employee safety. The tool is available as a free web application. Humans and robots are sharing workspace in more…

Max Planck researchers present a new deep neural network for predicting materials’ mechanical behaviour. Predicting the mechanical behaviour of all the systems that surround us, from vehicles and spaceships to bridges and skyscrapers, is essential for safety and design. Since more than 300 years, scientists know how to cast the underlying physics into a mathematical formulation, and thanks to technological progress a huge collection of numerical tools and methods have been developed to computationally solve the complex equations and predict…

Technological breakthrough from Tel Aviv University. A scientific breakthrough: Researchers from Tel Aviv University have engineered the world’s tiniest technology, with a thickness of only two atoms. According to the researchers, the new technology proposes a way for storing electric information in the thinnest unit known to science, in one of the most stable and inert materials in nature. The allowed quantum-mechanical electron tunneling through the atomically thin film may boost the information reading process much beyond current technologies. The…

A new method for identifying quantum orbits enables photoelectron spectroscopy via tunneling ionization to provide attosecond temporal and subangstrom spatial resolution measurement of electron dynamics. Electron motion in atoms and molecules is of fundamental importance to many physical, biological, and chemical processes. Exploring electron dynamics within atoms and molecules is essential for understanding and manipulating these phenomena. Pump-probe spectroscopy is the conventional technique. The 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry provides a well-known example wherein femtosecond pumped laser pulses served to…

An efficient two-bit quantum logic gate has been out of reach, until now. Research from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has found a missing piece in the puzzle of optical quantum computing. Jung-Tsung Shen, associate professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, has developed a deterministic, high-fidelity two-bit quantum logic gate that takes advantage of a new form of light. This new logic gate is orders of magnitude more…

The ability to precisely control the various properties of laser light is critical to much of the technology that we use today, from commercial virtual reality (VR) headsets to microscopic imaging for biomedical research. Many of today’s laser systems rely on separate, rotating components to control the wavelength, shape and power of a laser beam, making these devices bulky and difficult to maintain. Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a…

What steers galaxies, or whole ensembles of galaxies – so-called galaxy clusters? Aren’t they surrounded by vast empty space? Could the recently discovered long hot interconnecting gas filaments play a role? Although cosmological models and simulations predicted these structures and the role they may play, the observational confirmation of their existence, using the x-ray space telescope eROSITA, is quite recent. Further snapshots of simulations compared to the observations unveil a galaxy group speeding along such a long gas filament, on…

Six months ago, astronomers at the University of Bonn reported the discovery of an extremely long intergalactic gas filament with the X-ray telescope eROSITA. In a new study, they have now focused on an interesting structure in the filament, the northern clump. Their new observational data prove that this is a cluster of galaxies with a black hole at its center. The gas filament is therefore a galactic matter highway: The northern clump is moving along it towards two more…

Russian scientists have experimentally proved the existence of a new type of quasiparticle – previously unknown excitations of coupled pairs of photons in qubit chains. This discovery could be a step towards disorder-robust quantum metamaterials. The study was published in Physical Review B. Superconducting qubits are a leading qubit modality today that is currently being pursued by industry and academia for quantum computing applications. However, the performance of quantum computers is largely affected by decoherence that contributes to a qubits…

An international team of researchers has demonstrated a new concept for the generation of intense extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) radiation by high-harmonic generation (HHG). Its advantage lies in the fact that its footprint is much smaller than currently existing intense XUV lasers. The new scheme is straightforward and could be implemented in many laboratories worldwide, which may boost the research field of ultrafast XUV science. The detailed experimental and theoretical results have been published in Optica. The invention of the laser has…

Motions of a remarkable cosmic structure have been measured for the first time, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The blast wave and debris from an exploded star are seen moving away from the explosion site and colliding with a wall of surrounding gas. Astronomers estimate that light from the supernova explosion reached Earth about 1,700 years ago, or when the Mayan empire was flourishing and the Jin dynasty ruled China. However, by cosmic standards the supernova remnant formed by the…

A sharp-edged aperture is a promising solution for eliminating side lobes from superoscillatory waves. Optical superoscillation refers to a wave packet that can oscillate locally in a frequency exceeding its highest Fourier component. This intriguing phenomenon enables production of extremely localized waves that can break the optical diffraction barrier. Indeed, superoscillation has proven to be an effective technique for overcoming the diffraction barrier in optical superresolution imaging. The trouble is that strong side lobes accompany the main lobes of superoscillatory…

Researchers led by quantum physicist Peter Zoller have developed a method to make previously hardly accessible properties in quantum systems measurable. The new method for determining the quantum state in quantum simulators reduces the number of necessary measurements and makes work with quantum simulators much more efficient. In a few years, a new generation of quantum simulators could provide insights that would not be possible using simulations on conventional supercomputers. Quantum simulators are capable of processing a great amount of…

Columbia and Northwestern engineers use electric fields to induce oscillations in tiny particles; this motion could be used by researchers to develop microrobots. A challenging frontier in science and engineering is controlling matter outside of thermodynamic equilibrium to build material systems with capabilities that rival those of living organisms. Research on active colloids aims to create micro- and nanoscale “particles” that swim through viscous fluids like primitive microorganisms. When these self-propelled particles come together, they can organize and move like…

How reproducible are measurements in solid-state physics? New measurements show: An allegedly sensational effect does not exist at all. A single measurement result is not a proof – this has been shown again and again in science. We can only really rely on a research result when it has been measured several times, preferably by different research teams, in slightly different ways. In this way, errors can usually be detected sooner or later. However, a new study by Prof. Andrej…

Antiferromagnetic-based memory device could bolster computing applications and answers fundamental questions. A research team from Northwestern Engineering and the University of Messina in Italy have developed a new magnetic memory device that could lead to faster, more robust Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Composed of antiferromagnetic materials, the memory technology is immune to external magnetic fields and could one day improve a variety of computing systems, including AI hardware, cryptocurrency mining, and space exploration programs. A paper outlining the work, titled…