Scientists have made a significant leap in developing lasers that use sound waves instead of light. These “phonon lasers” hold promise for advancements in medical imaging, deep-sea exploration, and other areas. The new technique involves a tiny electronic nudge that dramatically enhances the power and precision of the sound waves produced by the laser. This paves the way for future devices that could utilize sound for a broader range of applications. Previously, phonon lasers made from small objects suffered from…

Spin-off company offers a tiny solution for a big problem. The first sign of spoilage in many food products is the formation of free radicals, which reduces the shelf-life and the overall quality of the food. Until now, the detection of these molecules has been very costly for the food companies. Researchers at HZB and the University of Stuttgart have developed a portable, small and inexpensive ‘EPR on a chip’ sensor that can detect free radicals even at very low…

MPI-M researchers and their partner institutions are currently performing atmospheric measurements over the equatorial Atlantic with eight coordinated measurement campaigns. They want to find out what controls the structure of the tropical rain belt, how it will change in the future and what this means for weather patterns. A variety of state-of-the-art research platforms are being used for the measurements – from ships to satellites. An international research team, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), is…

Atomic clocks have been used for decades – but now, even greater precision has become possible: TU Wien (Vienna) and JILA/NIST are presenting the w For many years, scientists all around the world have been working towards this goal, now suddenly things are happening very fast: it was only in April that a team led by Prof Thorsten Schumm (TU Wien, Vienna) announced a major success. For the first time, an atomic nucleus had been switched from one state to…

Spin-off company offers a tiny solution for a big problem. The first sign of spoilage in many food products is the formation of free radicals, which reduces the shelf-life and the overall quality of the food. Until now, the detection of these molecules has been very costly for the food companies. Researchers at HZB and the University of Stuttgart have developed a portable, small and inexpensive ‘EPR on a chip’ sensor that can detect free radicals even at very low…

A new Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and led by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, was awarded $14.4 million over four years to advance manufacturing of microelectronics by investigating approaches to building their components in fundamentally new ways. Instead of moving electrons through conducting metallic interconnects in the miniscule and ever shrinking parts of devices such as microchips used in computers and cell phones, the researchers propose to move information via spin waves that can…

As a new degree of freedom, the orbital angular momentum of electromagnetic waves exceeds the traditional frequency, phase, and amplitude, and is expected to promote the infinite expansion of channel capacity. Recently, a team of research professor Chao-Hai Du from Peking University and Professor Xiaofei Zang’s research group from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology have carried out in-depth cooperation. Based on the research foundation of both sides in the field of terahertz and metasurface, a new method…

The shoebox-sized BurstCube satellite has observed its first gamma-ray burst, the most powerful kind of explosion in the universe, according to a recent analysis of observations collected over the last several months. “We’re excited to collect science data,” said Sean Semper, BurstCube’s lead engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s an important milestone for the team and for the many early career engineers and scientists that have been part of the mission.” The event, called GRB 240629A, occurred…

Thousands of light particles can merge into a type of “super photon” under certain conditions. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now been able to use “tiny nano molds” to influence the design of this so-called Bose-Einstein condensate. This enables them to shape the speck of light into a simple lattice structure consisting of four points of light arranged in quadratic form. Such structures could potentially be used in the future to make the exchange of information between multiple…

Using MeerKAT data, an international team including astronomers from MPIfR (Bonn, Germany) has compiled the largest catalog of radio sources from any MeerKAT survey to date. With this catalog, they were able to make a measurement of the cosmic radio dipole, a cosmological effect that arises from the Earth’s motion through the Universe, and provides an important test of our theories of cosmology at the largest scales. The new measurement demonstrates the value of the sensitive MeerKAT data, and shows…

Together with 24 German research institutions and companies under the coordination of Forschungszentrum (FZ) Jülich, Fraunhofer IPMS is working on an integrated German quantum computer based on superconducting quantum chips and with improved error rates. Halfway through the project, the first demonstrator can now be put into operation. The CNT at Fraunhofer IPMS is contributing its expertise of state-of-the-art, industry-compatible CMOS semiconductor manufacturing. Quantum computers are seen as the central solution for the increasing demand for more and more computing…

Around 4 billion years ago, an asteroid hit the Jupiter moon Ganymede. Now, a Kobe University researcher realized that the Solar System’s biggest moon’s axis has shifted as a result of the impact, which confirmed that the asteroid was around 20 times larger than the one that ended the age of the dinosaurs on Earth, and caused one of the biggest impacts with clear traces in the Solar System. Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, bigger even than the…

Automatic image recognition to identify types of wood. The new European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is intended to prevent goods marketed in the EU from contributing to the spread of deforestation. When a wood product is brought into the EU market there must be documentation of which types of wood were used to produce it. Depending on the material, even the initial review of the declared type of wood is no easy task. Paper requires time-consuming examination. Now, a new AI-based…

In a collaboration between scientists from Physics and Chemistry at the University of Bayreuth and Physical Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, it has now been possible to realize optically switchable photonic units that enable precise addressing of individual units. This will make it possible to reliably store and read binary information optically. They report on this in the scientific journal Advanced Optical Materials. Electronic devices based on microchips, i.e. integrated circuits, are among the most important inventions of the…

This discovery challenges previous assumptions about the practical limits of quantum state control of chiral molecules and paves the way for new research directions in molecular physics and beyond. Chiral molecules, which exist as two non-superimposable mirror image versions called enantiomers, similar to our left and right hands, are fundamental to the fabric of life. The ability to control these molecules and their quantum states has profound implications, from spatial separation of enantiomers in the gas phase to testing hypotheses…

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory added a new neutron scattering instrument to its powerhouse of discovery at the Spallation Neutron Source, charting new territory for neutron imaging through artificial intelligence. In July, DOE’s Office of Science approved the final commissioning of the Versatile Neutron Imaging Instrument, or VENUS. “It’s a dream come true,” said ORNL neutron scattering scientist Hassina Bilheux. “It has been an honor and privilege to work with so many talented people dedicated to seeing…