… that affect satellite communications. A study from an international team led by researchers from Nagoya University in Japan and the University of New Hampshire in the United States has revealed the importance of the Earth’s upper atmosphere in determining how large geomagnetic storms develop. Their findings reveal the previously underestimated importance of the Earth’s atmosphere. Understanding the factors that cause geomagnetic storms is important because they can have a direct impact on the Earth’s magnetic field such as causing…

Breakthrough realized for retaining quantum information in a single-electron quantum bit. Coherence stands as a pillar of effective communication, whether it is in writing, speaking or information processing. This principle extends to quantum bits, or qubits, the building blocks of quantum computing. A quantum computer could one day tackle previously insurmountable challenges in climate prediction, material design, drug discovery and more. A team led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has achieved a major milestone toward…

Columbia chemists discover ballistic flow in a quantum material. The finding could help overcome shortcomings in semiconductors. Semiconductors—most notably, silicon—underpin the computers, cellphones, and other electronic devices that power our daily lives, including the device on which you are reading this article. As ubiquitous as semiconductors have become, they come with limitations. The atomic structure of any material vibrates, which creates quantum particles called phonons. Phonons in turn cause the particles—either electrons or electron-hole pairs called excitons—that carry energy and…

Aalto University researchers will probe the secrets of dark matter using a quantum detector of unprecedented sensitivity. In the pitch dark of the cosmos lurks an invisible kind of matter. Its presence is seen in the rippling ebb and flow of galaxies, but it’s never been directly observed. What secrets lie beneath the surface, brewing in the deep? Physicists have long theorized about the composition of dark matter, which is thought to be five times more abundant than regular matter….

Quantum physicists at Delft University of Technology have shown that it’s possible to control and manipulate spin waves on a chip using superconductors for the first time. These tiny waves in magnets may offer an alternative to electronics in the future, interesting for energy-efficient information technology or connecting pieces in a quantum computer, for example. The breakthrough, published in Science, primarily gives physicists new insight into the interaction between magnets and superconductors. Energy-efficient substitute “Spin waves are waves in a…

In physics, quasiparticles are used to describe complex processes in solids. In ultracold quantum gases, these quasiparticles can be reproduced and studied. Now, for the first time, Austrian scientists led by Rudolf Grimm have been able to observe in experiments how Fermi polarons – a special type of quasiparticle – can interact with each other. Their findings have been published in Nature Physics. An electron moving through a solid generates a polarization in its environment due to its electric charge….

Using a network of radio telescopes on Earth and in space, astronomers have captured the most detailed view ever of a jet of plasma from a supermassive black hole. The jet travels at nearly the speed of light and shows complex, twisted patterns near its source. These patterns challenge the standard theory that has been used for 40 years to explain how these jets form and change over time. A major contribution to the observations was made possible by the…

Hussam Amrouch has developed an AI-ready architecture that is twice as powerful as comparable in-memory computing approaches. As reported in the journal Nature, the professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) applies a new computational paradigm using special circuits known as ferroelectric field effect transistors (FeFETs). Within a few years, this could prove useful for generative AI, deep learning algorithms and robotic applications. The latest AI chips deliver twice the performance of their predecessors. New AI chips are based…

Constantly increasing data volumes, ever more complex calculation and modeling – working with large amounts of data is crucial in many fields of research. The new high-performance computer “Marvin” now makes it easier for University of Bonn researchers to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning. Featuring a scalable GPU partition, Marvin is among the world’s top 500 most powerful computers. Funded in part under the Excellence program, the acquisition of Marvin comes as part of the University of Bonn digital…

New Quantum Effect Demonstrated for the First Time. For the first time, experimental physicists from the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat have demonstrated a new quantum effect aptly named the “spinaron.” In a meticulously controlled environment and using an advanced set of instruments, they managed to prove the unusual state a cobalt atom assumes on a copper surface. This revelation challenges the long-held Kondo effect – a theoretical concept developed in the 1960s, and which has been considered the standard…

Astrophysicists scan the Galaxy for signs of life. Astrophysicists from Trinity College Dublin are scanning the Universe for “technosignatures” emanating from distant planets that would provide support for the existence of intelligent, alien life. Using the Irish LOFAR telescope and its counterpart in Onsala, Sweden, the team – led by Professor Evan Keane, Associate Professor of Radio Astronomy in Trinity’s School of Physics, and Head of the Irish LOFAR Telescope – plans to monitor millions of star systems. Scientists have been…

Innovation Center of NanoMedicine (iCONM; Center Director: Kazunori Kataoka; Location: Kawasaki, Japan) has announced with The University of Tokyo that a group led by Prof. Takanori Ichiki, Research Director of iCONM (Professor, Department of Materials Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo), proposed a new property evaluation method of nanoparticles’ shape anisotropy that solves long-standing issues in nanoparticle evaluation that date back to Einstein’s time. The paper, titled ” Analysis of Brownian motion trajectories of non-spherical nanoparticles using…

Team of researchers headed by physicists Prof. Wolfram Pernice and Prof. Martin Salinga and computer specialist Prof. Benjamin Risse, all from the University of Münster, has developed a so-called event-based architecture, using photonic processors. In a similar way to the brain, this makes possible the continuous adaptation of the connections within the neural network. Modern computer models – for example for complex, potent AI applications – push traditional digital computer processes to their limits. New types of computing architecture, which…

Alexander Dax received two Distinguished Paper Awards at this year’s USENIX cybersecurity conference for research papers he has worked on. One of the two coveted awards in the research community honored him for his paper “Hash gone bad: Automated discovery of protocol attacks that exploit hash function weaknesses”. In the work, the Saarland native shows that automated security analyses of Internet protocols are often inaccurate because they are based on false assumptions – in this case, perfect hash functions. He…

Astronomers have carried out the biggest ever computer simulations from the Big Bang to the present day to investigate how the Universe evolved. The FLAMINGO simulations calculate the evolution of all the components of the Universe – ordinary matter, like stars and planets, dark matter and dark energy – based on the laws of physics. As the simulations progress, virtual galaxies and galaxy clusters emerge in precise detail. The team behind FLAMINGO, from Durham University, UK, Leiden University, the Netherlands,…

Researchers achieve a landmark in quantum squeezing. In 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, made history when it made the first direct detection of gravitational waves, or ripples in space and time, produced by a pair of colliding black holes. Since then, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LIGO and its sister detector in Europe, Virgo, have detected gravitational waves from dozens of mergers between black holes as well as from collisions between a related class of stellar…