Analysis of lightweight nuclei emerging from gold ion collisions offers insight into primordial matter phase changes. Physicists analyzing data from gold ion smashups at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, are searching for evidence that nails down a so-called critical point in the way nuclear matter changes from one phase to another. New findings from members of RHIC’s STAR Collaboration published in Physical…

A team of researchers from EPFL have found a way to use the phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing to determine with precision – about 3 times more precise than any other technique – the mass of a galaxy containing a quasar, as well as their evolution in cosmic time. Knowing the mass of quasar host galaxies provides insight into the evolution of galaxies in the early universe, for building scenarios of galaxy formation and black hole development. The results are…

Imagine being able to try on different clothes on a virtual avatar and see how they look from every angle. Or adjusting the direction your pet is looking in your favorite photo. You could even change the perspective of a landscape picture. These types of photo edits have always been challenging, even for experts. A novel AI tool now promises that with just a few mouse clicks, anyone can achieve edits like these effortlessly. The method is being developed by…

… can circulate in superconductors in ways not seen before. Within superconductors little tornadoes of electrons, known as quantum vortices, can occur which have important implications in superconducting applications such as quantum sensors. Now a new kind of superconducting vortex has been found, an international team of researchers reports. Egor Babaev, professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, says the study revises the prevailing understanding of how electronic flow can occur in superconductors, based on work about quantum…

Successfully implementing tomorrow’s automation today. Offering companies a clear competitive advantage and making them fit to meet the challenges of the production of the future: this is the performance promise that Fraunhofer IPA will be exhibiting at the automatica trade fair from June 27 to June 30, 2023. Here, visitors will experience applications in robotics, automation, artificial intelligence and cleanroom technologies and gain new insights through regular expert sessions and “Interactive Live” interviews. The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and…

Improved speed, precision and flexibility — it is important to take advantage of every possible opportunity in optimizing production. To this end, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS have developed SURFinpro, a solution that uses artificial intelligence and optical measurement technology to detect, classify and visualize defects in real time, and report them to the plant carrying out the production. The experts will be presenting their system from June 27 to 30, 2023, at Laser…

Scientists decode the chemical profile of tantalum surface oxides to understand loss and improve qubit performance. Whether it’s baking a cake, building a house, or developing a quantum device, the quality of the end product significantly depends on its ingredients or base materials. Researchers working to improve the performance of superconducting qubits, the foundation of quantum computers, have been experimenting using different base materials in an effort to increase the coherent lifetimes of qubits. The coherence time is a measure…

Explaining the interaction between quantized vortices and normal fluids. Liquid helium-4, which is in a superfluid state at cryogenic temperatures close to absolute zero (-273°C), has a special vortex called a quantized vortex that originates from quantum mechanical effects. When the temperature is relatively high, the normal fluid exists simultaneously in the superfluid helium, and when the quantized vortex is in motion, mutual friction occurs between it and the normal-fluid. However, it is difficult to explain precisely how a quantized…

Quantum computers might be able to crack currently unsolvable tasks, but it is not easy to expand them to the necessary size. A new technique from a team of Darmstadt physicists could overcome this hurdle. Darmstadt physicists have developed a technique that could overcome one of the biggest hurdles in building a practically-relevant quantum computer. They make use of an optical effect here discovered by British photo pioneer William Talbot in 1836. The team led by Malte Schlosser and Gerhard…

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have, collaborating with the University of Münster and Ruhr-Universität Bochum, developed new technology capable of processing the enormous amounts of information quantum systems generate. Deterministic single photon light sources, creating quantum bits at extreme rates and speed are now coupled to specially designed, integrated photonic circuits, capable of processing quantum information with adequate speed and quality without degrading the susceptible quantum states. This means that the first steps have been taken towards the development…

Scientists from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators in the RHIC-STAR experiment have observed the collective flow of hypernuclei in heavy-ion collisions for the first time. This achievement offers a new direction for studying hyperon–nucleon (Y–N) interactions in dense nuclear matter environments. The study was published in Physical Review Letters on May 24.  Hyperons are baryons that contain strange (s) quark, while nucleons (proton or neutron) only contain up (u) and down (d)…

Research using the world’s most energetic laser has shed light on the properties of highly compressed matter – essential to understanding the structure of giant planets and stars, and to develop controlled nuclear fusion, a process that could harvest carbon-free energy. Matter in the interior of giant planets and some relatively cool stars is highly compressed by the weight of the layers above. The extreme pressures generated are strong enough to charge of atoms and generate free electrons, in a…

1.7 Petabits, equal to more than 10 million home broadband connections. Invented in Japan with Macquarie University support. An optical fibre about the thickness of a human hair can now carry the equivalent of more than 10 million fast home internet connections running at full capacity. A team of Japanese, Australian, Dutch, and Italian researchers has set a new speed record for an industry standard optical fibre, achieving 1.7 Petabits over a 67km length of fibre. The fibre, which contains…

SwRI scientist awarded JWST Cycle 2 observations of Enceladus. Two Southwest Research Institute scientists were part of a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team that observed a towering plume of water vapor more than 6,000 miles long — roughly the distance from the U.S. to Japan — spewing from the surface of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. In light of this NASA JWST Cycle 1 discovery, SwRI’s Dr. Christopher Glein also received a Cycle 2 allocation to study the plume as well as…

A team of astrophysicists and citizen scientists have identified what may be some of the last planets NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope observed during its nearly decade-long mission. The trio of exoplanets – worlds beyond our solar system – are all between the size of Earth and Neptune and closely orbit their stars. ”These are fairly average planets in the grand scheme of Kepler observations,” said Elyse Incha, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But they’re exciting because Kepler observed them…

Did you know that wires can be used to ionize air to make a loudspeaker? Simply put, it’s possible to generate sound by creating an electric field in a set of parallel wires, aka a plasma transducer, strong enough to ionize the air particles. The charged ions are then accelerated along the magnetic field lines, pushing the residual non-ionized air in a way to produce sound. If a loudspeaker can generate sound, it can also absorb it. While this plasma…