Rice physicists set far-more-accurate limits on speed of quantum information Nature’s speed limits aren’t posted on road signs, but Rice University physicists have discovered a new way to deduce them that is better — infinitely better, in some cases — than previous methods. “The big question is, ‘How fast can anything — information, mass, energy — move in nature?’” said Kaden Hazzard, a theoretical quantum physicist at Rice. “It turns out that if somebody hands you a material, it is…

An ultrashort pulse laser opens a new pathway toward petahertz electron technology. In modern information technology (IT), data are processed and carried by motion of electrons in a CPU. In the electric circuits, the electrons move in a desired direction by an applied electric field. A frequency of the on-off switching of the electron motion, which is referred to as a “CPU clock” for example, is an order of gigahertz (109 Hz). On the other hand, an oscillating field of…

Quantum bits, or qubits, can hold quantum information much longer now thanks to efforts by an international research team. The researchers have increased the retention time, or coherence time, to 10 milliseconds – 10,000 times longer than the previous record – by combining the orbital motion and spinning inside an atom. Such a boost in information retention has major implications for information technology developments since the longer coherence time makes spin-orbit qubits the ideal candidate for building large quantum computers….

Cosmologists have zoomed in on the smallest clumps of dark matter in a virtual universe – which could help us to find the real thing in space. An international team of researchers, including Durham University, UK, used supercomputers in Europe and China to focus on a typical region of a computer-generated universe. The zoom they were able to achieve is the equivalent of being able to see a flea on the surface of the Moon. This allowed them to make…

A team of astronomers have identified the first direct evidence that groups of stars can tear apart their planet-forming disc, leaving it warped and with tilted rings. This new research suggests exotic planets, not unlike Tatooine in Star Wars, may form in inclined rings in bent discs around multiple stars. The results were made possible thanks to observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Our Solar System is remarkably…

New research demonstrates how the use of molecules in quantum computing leads to fewer errors. The technology behind the quantum computers of the future is fast developing, with several different approaches in progress. Many of the strategies, or “blueprints,” for quantum computers rely on atoms or artificial atom-like electrical circuits. In a new theoretical study in the journal Physical Review X, a group of physicists at Caltech demonstrates the benefits of a lesser-studied approach that relies not on atoms but…

The process occurs in active-core nuclei. A molecular gas cloud that accumulates in the central region is blown away by radiation from the black hole’s accretion disk, forming a huge expanding hot bubble, whose radius can reach 300 light years. Black holes can expel a thousand times more matter than they capture. The mechanism that governs both ejection and capture is the accretion disk, a vast mass of gas and dust spiraling around the black hole at extremely high speeds….

High-precision measurements of the mass of the deuteron, the nucleus of heavy hydrogen, provide new insights into the reliability of fundamental quantities in atomic and nuclear physics. This is reported in the journal “Nature” by a collaboration led by the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics Heidelberg, Germany, and partners from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research Darmstadt and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz, Germany. Thus, data directly related to the atomic mass standard,…

A new study from The University of Texas at Austin is helping scientists piece together the ancient climate of Mars by revealing how much rainfall and snowmelt filled its lake beds and river valleys 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago. The study, published in Geology, represents the first time that researchers have quantified the precipitation that must have been present across the planet, and it comes out as the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is making its way to the…

GREGOR, the largest solar telescope in Europe, which is operated by a German consortium and located on Teide Observatory, Spain, has obtained unprecedented images of the fine-structure of the Sun. Following a major redesign of GREGOR’s optics, carried out by a team of scientists and engineers from the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics (KIS), the Sun can be observed at a higher resolution than before from Europe. The Sun is our star and has a profound influence on our planet,…

Theory suggests that quantum critical points may be analogous to black holes as places where all sorts of strange phenomena can exist in a quantum material. Now scientists are trying to pin down where this particular quantum critical point might be. Among all the curious states of matter that can coexist in a quantum material, jostling for preeminence as temperature, electron density and other factors change, some scientists think a particularly weird juxtaposition exists at a single intersection of factors,…

A new tool to analyze molecules is 100 times faster than previous methods Spectroscopy is an important tool of observation in many areas of science and industry. Infrared spectroscopy is especially important in the world of chemistry where it is used to analyze and identify different molecules. The current state-of-the-art method can make approximately 1 million observations per second. UTokyo researchers have greatly surpassed this figure with a new method about 100 times faster. From climate science to safety systems,…

Innovators from Purdue University hope their new technology can help transform paper sheets from a notebook into a music player interface and make food packaging interactive. Purdue engineers developed a simple printing process that renders any paper or cardboard packaging into a keyboard, keypad or other easy-to-use human-machine interfaces. This technology is published in the Aug. 23 edition of Nano Energy. Videos showing this technology are available at https://youtu.be/TfA0d8IpjWU, https://youtu.be/J0iCxjicJIQ and https://youtu.be/c9E6vXYtIw0. “This is the first time a self-powered paper-based…

Analyzing documents faster using artificial intelligence from Fraunhofer The flood of documents created every day in business and in society as a whole poses an enormous challenge. Information from countless different sources must be sorted, processed and evaluated. And this issue isn’t limited to companies: public authorities, research institutions and hospitals are affected, too. The Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS has developed solutions that classify all kinds of documents and analyze their text content. The key…

Protection against cyberattacks Ports are critical infrastructures since disruptions and stoppages can have immense not only economic impacts. The potential security risks are multifarious, especially in digitalized container terminal operations, which are steadily gaining importance through Industrie 4.0. A new method and tool set developed by research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF and its industry partners enables preventive defense against attacks on automated cyber-physical systems and helps increase security along the entire supply chain,…

New toolbox for the nanooptics allows the theoretical description to the highest accurate level possiple With the highest possible spatial resolution of less than a millionth of a millimetre, electron microscopes make it possible to study the properties of materials at the atomic level and thus demonstrate the realm of quantum mechanics. Quantum-physical fundamentals can be studied particularly well by the interactions between electrons and photons. Excited with laser light, for example, the energy, mass or velocity of the electrons…