The conditions on Earth are ideal for life. Most places on our planet are neither too hot nor too cold and offer liquid water. These and other requirements for life, however, delicately depend on the right composition of the atmosphere. Too little or too much of certain gases – like carbon dioxide – and Earth could become a ball of ice or turn into a pressure cooker. When scientists look for potentially habitable planets, a key component is therefore their…
Quantum technologies are enabled by precise control of the state and interactions of individual quantum objects. Innsbruck physicists have now proposed a way to remotely control the state of individual quantum emitters. The underlying idea, developed by a research group led by Oriol Romero-Isart, is based on chirped light pulses. This novel approach could become a relevant asset in quantum computers and quantum simulation in the future. In order to exploit the properties of quantum physics technologically, quantum objects and…
Robots solving computer games, recognizing human voices, or helping in finding optimal medical treatments: those are only a few astonishing examples of what the field of artificial intelligence has produced in the past years. The ongoing race for better machines has led to the question of how and with what means improvements can be achieved. In parallel, huge recent progress in quantum technologies have confirmed the power of quantum physics, not only for its often peculiar and puzzling theories, but…
On December 6, 2016, a high-energy particle called an electron antineutrino was hurtling through space at nearly the speed of light. Normally, the ghostly particle would zip right through the Earth as if it weren’t even there. But this particle just so happened to smash into an electron deep inside the South Pole’s glacial ice. The collision created a new particle, known as the W- boson. That boson quickly decayed, creating a shower of secondary particles. The whole thing played…
New muon spin-rotation experiments proved spontaneous electrical currents in superconductors. Superconductivity – that means current flow without electrical resistance. This quantum phenomenon attracts the curiosity of many theoretical and experimental physicists who are working to discover and explain the underlying fundamental mechanisms. Intensive research on superconductivity is also driven by the possibility of new applications of these material class in energy and motor technology. Of particular interest is the material strontium ruthenate, which has been the subject of intensive research…
A critical ingredient for auroras exists much higher in space than previously thought, according to new research in the journal Scientific Reports. The dazzling light displays in the polar night skies require an electric accelerator to propel charged particles down through the atmosphere. Scientists at Nagoya University and colleagues in Japan, Taiwan and the US have found that it exists beyond 30,000 kilometres above the Earth’s surface – offering insight not just about Earth, but other planets as well. The…
… new Skoltech research helps model future optoelect Researchers at Skoltech and their colleagues proposed a photonic device from two optical resonators with liquid crystals inside them to study optical properties of this system that can be useful for future generations of optoelectronic and spinoptronic devices. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review B. The simplest kind of optical resonator consists of two mirrors directly opposite each other, “squeezing” light between them. When you stand inside a mirror…
Astronomers have discovered evidence for an extraordinarily long jet of particles coming from a supermassive black hole in the early universe, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. If confirmed, it would be the most distant supermassive black hole with a jet detected in X-rays. Coming from a galaxy about 12.7 billion light-years from Earth, the jet may help explain how the biggest black holes formed at a very early time in the universe’s history. The source of the jet is a…
The demonstration of electroluminescence at terahertz frequencies from a silicon-germanium device marks a key step towards the long-sought goal of a silicon-based laser. When it comes to microelectronics, there is one chemical element like no other: silicon, the workhorse of the transistor technology that drives our information society. The countless electronic devices we use in everyday life are a testament to how today very high volumes of silicon-based components can be produced at very low cost. It seems natural, then,…
Magnetometry exploiting color center defects in diamond probes and magneto-optic imaging found to complement each other / Progress towards the creation of more effective data storage systems Obtaining a precise understanding of magnetic structures is one of the main objectives of solid-state physics. Significant research is currently being undertaken in this field, the aim being to develop future data processing applications that use tiny magnetic structures as information carriers. Physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute…
NIST researchers rely on a light touch. You’re going at the speed limit down a two-lane road when a car barrels out of a driveway on your right. You slam on the brakes, and within a fraction of a second of the impact an airbag inflates, saving you from serious injury or even death. The airbag deploys thanks to an accelerometer — a sensor that detects sudden changes in velocity. Accelerometers keep rockets and airplanes on the correct flight path,…
The source of potentially hazardous solar particles, released from the Sun at high speed during storms in its outer atmosphere, has been located for the first time by researchers at UCL and George Mason University, Virginia, USA. These particles are highly charged and, if they reach Earth’s atmosphere, can potentially disrupt satellites and electronic infrastructure, as well as pose a radiation risk to astronauts and people in airplanes. In 1859, during what’s known as the Carrington Event, a large solar…
With the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered and studied in detail the most distant source of radio emission known to date. The source is a “radio-loud” quasar — a bright object with powerful jets emitting at radio wavelengths — that is so far away its light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. The discovery could provide important clues to help astronomers understand the early Universe. Quasars are very bright…
Fluctuations in net proton production hint at a possible ‘critical point’ marking a change in the way nuclear matter transforms from one phase to another. Physicists studying collisions of gold ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, are embarking on a journey through the phases of nuclear matter—the stuff that makes up the nuclei of all the visible matter in…
In early 2016, an icy visitor from the edge of our solar system hurtled past Earth. It briefly became visible to stargazers as Comet Catalina before it slingshotted past the Sun to disappear forevermore out of the solar system. Among the many observatories that captured a view of this comet, which appeared near the Big Dipper, was the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), NASA’s telescope on an airplane. Using one of its unique infrared instruments, SOFIA was able to…
Typically, light emitted from standard lasers has a controllable degree of freedom (DoF) which may be polarisation or beam shape. By suitably manipulating a laser with the introduction of specialised optical components, an output with 2 DoFs, such as vector vortex beams with controllable polarisation and orbital angular momentum (OAM). The term ‘vector’ describes a structured change in the polarisation across the beam and ‘vortex’ describes the twisting of the phase in the beam (OAM), much like a twisting tornado….
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