A team of researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim have discovered an exciting method for controlling spin carried by quantized spin wave excitations in antiferromagnetic insulators. Elementary particles carry an intrinsic angular momentum known as their spin. For an electron, the spin can take only two particular values relative to a quantization axis, letting us denote them as spin-up and…

An international research team led by the University of Bern has discovered an exotic binary system composed of two young planet-like objects, orbiting around each other from a very large distance. Although these objects look like giant exoplanets, they formed in the same way as stars, proving that the mechanisms driving star formation can produce rogue worlds in unusual systems deprived of a Sun. Star-forming processes sometimes create mysterious astronomical objects called brown dwarfs, which are smaller and colder than…

Printing with an ink-jet printer is part of daily life, but the same technology finds more complex applications in electronics and in protein separation. These applications, considered futuristic only few decades ago, rely on the quality of the printing process which depends on the flow of the “ink” through narrow pores. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now revealed the microscopic mechanism governing this flow. The flow of water in a pipe is mainly governed by…

Strengthening European competitiveness through industrial use of Photonics. A photonics network of pan-European scale will start in January 2021 as part of the EU Horizon 2020 program: The project „Photonics Digital Innovation Hub“– PhotonHub Europe for short – is designed to make small and medium-sized European companies fit for the future by supporting them in the use of photonic technologies. The „PhotonHub Europe“ expects more than 1000 new high-tech jobs and around one billion euros in sales by 2025. The…

In a new study an international research team led by the University of Vienna have shown that structures built around a single layer of graphene allow for strong optical nonlinearities that can convert light. The team achieved this by using nanometer-sized gold ribbons to squeeze light, in the form of plasmons, into atomically-thin graphene. The results, which are published in the Nature Nanotechnology are promising for a new family of ultra-small tunable nonlinear devices. In the last years, a concerted…

WSU researchers have used the ancient Japanese art of paper folding to possibly solve a key challenge for outer space travel – how to store and move fuel to rocket engines. The researchers have developed an origami-inspired, folded plastic fuel bladder that doesn’t crack at super cold temperatures and could someday be used to store and pump fuel. Led by graduate student Kjell Westra and Jake Leachman, associate professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, the researchers have…

An international team of scientists reports in Nature Photonics on a novel technique for a high-brightness coherent and few-cycle duration source spanning 7 optical octaves from the UV to the THz. Analytical optical methods are vital to our modern society as they permit the fast and secure identification of substances within solids, liquids or gases. These methods rely on light interacting with each of these substances differently at different parts of the optical spectrum. For instance, the ultraviolet range of…

Physicists have resolved a long-lasting discrepancy between the measured velocities of interstellar oxygen atoms and other elements in our galaxy: a difference of 380 km/s, which astrophysical measurements of X-ray absorption by oxygen atoms gave, had given astrophysicists a headache. At such speeds, a substantial fraction of this important element could in principle move away from the galactic disk, since the escape speed from the Milky Way at the solar system is 580 km/s. There was suspicion of a problem…

Advance could pave the way for early warning system on COVID-19 and flu using wearables. Temperature data collected by wearable devices worn on the finger can be reliably used to detect the onset of fevers, a leading symptom of both COVID-19 and the flu, according to a team of researchers from the University of California San Diego, UC San Francisco and MIT Lincoln Lab. Researchers published their results in a paper titled “Feasibility of continuous fever monitoring using wearable devices”…

Researchers from Osaka University accurately and arbitrarily control flying velocities of light bullets, offering new opportunities for optical and physical applications. Though it sounds like something straight out of science fiction, controlling the speed of light has in fact been a long-standing challenge for physicists. In a study recently published in Communications Physics, researchers from Osaka University generated light bullets with highly controllable velocities. According to Albert Einstein’s principle of relativity, the speed of light is constant and cannot be…

Hawk Supercomputer at the University of Stuttgart Gets Upgrade. The High-Performance Computing Center of the University of Stuttgart (HLRS) will add NVIDIA graphic processing units (GPUs) to its world-class supercomputer, Hawk. The change in architecture from a purely central processing unit (CPU)-based architecture to a hybrid system will enhance HLRS’s capacity for deep learning applications and enable new kinds of workflows that combine simulation using high-performance computing and Big Data methods. “At HLRS our mission has always been to provide…

European fusion device once again will work with deuterium-tritium plasmas in 2021 Plasma experiments that generate fusion energy are planned for next year at the Joint European Torus JET, the world’s largest fusion device at Culham/UK. Scientists of Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) at Garching have contributed intensively to the preparations. Today, JET is the only device that can experiment with the fuel of a future fusion power plant. In the European fusion research programme, the JET tokamak…

A team of researchers from Delft University of Technology, Leiden University (both in the Netherlands), Tohoku University in Japan and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg has developed a new type of MRI scanner that can image waves in ultrathin magnets. Unlike electrical currents, these so-called ‘spin waves’ produce little heat, making them promising signal carriers for future green ICT applications. Their work has been published in Science Advances. MRI scanners can…

A new technology, called Artificial Chemist 2.0, allows users to go from requesting a custom quantum dot to completing the relevant R&D and beginning manufacturing in less than an hour. The tech is completely autonomous, and uses artificial intelligence (AI) and automated robotic systems to perform multi-step chemical synthesis and analysis. Quantum dots are colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals, which are used in applications such as LED displays and solar cells. “When we rolled out the first version of Artificial Chemist, it…

Researchers have used AI to control beams for the next generation of smaller, cheaper accelerators for research, medical and industrial applications. Experiments led by Imperial College London researchers, using the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Central Laser Facility (CLF), showed that an algorithm was able to tune the complex parameters involved in controlling the next generation of plasma-based particle accelerators. The algorithm was able to optimize the accelerator much more quickly than a human operator, and could even outperform experiments…

At the end of 2019, the neutron source used for materials research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) was shut down as planned. Now the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) in Munich is taking over two scientific instruments from the HZB. The Federal Ministry of Science and Research (BMBF) is funding the relocation and adaptation with 5.62 million euros. Currently the MLZ provides its users with 26 scientific instruments for neutron research in Garching. Four more are still under construction. Now, the…