Quantum experiments that could previously only be performed with photons are now also possible with atoms: Beams of entangled atoms have been produced at TU Wien (Vienna). Heads or tails? If we toss two coins into the air, the result of one coin toss has nothing to do with the result of the other. Coins are independent objects. In the world of quantum physics, things are different: quantum particles can be entangled, in which case they can no longer be…
MPQ researchers realize the first quantum-logic computer operation between two separate quantum modules in different laboratories. Today’s quantum computers contain up to several dozen memory and processing units, the so-called qubits. Severin Daiss, Stefan Langenfeld, and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have successfully interconnected two such qubits located in different labs to a distributed quantum computer by linking the qubits with a 60-meter-long optical fiber. Over such a distance they realized a quantum-logic gate…
Nuclear physicists at the University of Cologne have contributed to an international research collaboration to show the way the spin of the two fragments, resulting from the splitting of an atomic nucleus, is generated / publication in Nature. A series of experiments at the ALTO particle accelerator facility in Orsay, France, has revealed that the fragments resulting from nuclear fission obtain their intrinsic angular momentum (or spin) after fission, not before, as is widely assumed. This result was made possible…
Juno’s UVS instrument makes relatively rare observation of common events. From aboard the Juno spacecraft, a Southwest Research Institute-led instrument observing auroras serendipitously spotted a bright flash above Jupiter’s clouds last spring. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team studied the data and determined that they had captured a bolide, an extremely bright meteoroid explosion in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere. “Jupiter undergoes a huge number of impacts per year, much more than the Earth, so impacts themselves are not rare,” said…
New storage and information technology requires new higher performance materials. One of these materials is yttrium iron garnet, which has special magnetic properties. Thanks to a new process, it can now be transferred to any material. Developed by physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the method could advance the production of smaller, faster and more energy-efficient components for data storage and information processing. The physicists have published their results in the journal “Applied Physics Letters”. Magnetic materials play a…
In solid-state physics, the precise interactions of electrons are analyzed through meticulous detective work, ultimately to gain a better understanding of fundamental physical phenomena. It comes as no surprise to fans of the thriller genre that in order to solve a case, fingerprints must be carefully located at the crime scene. In modern-day solid-state physics, scientists look for scattering processes—interactions between electrons—that hold the clues necessary for getting closer to the truth. Revealing these crucial hints is particularly difficult in…
Surprise in solid-state physics: The Hall effect, which normally requires magnetic fields, can also be generated in a completely different way — with extreme strength. Electric current is deflected by a magnetic field – in conducting materials this leads to the so-called Hall effect. This effect is often used to measure magnetic fields. A surprising discovery has now been made at TU Wien, in collaboration with scientists from the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland), McMater University (Canada), and Rice University (USA):…
LHC/ATLAS Creation of matter in an interaction of two photons belongs to a class of very rare phenomena. From the data of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, collected with the new AFP proton detectors at the highest energies available to-date, a more accurate – and more interesting – picture of the phenomena occurring during photon collisions is emerging. If you point a glowing flashlight towards another one, you do not expect any spectacular phenomena. The photons emitted by both…
Periodic pulses of light forming a comb in the frequency domain are widely used for sensing and ranging. The key to the miniaturisation of this technology towards chip-integrated solutions is the generation of dissipative solitons in ring-shaped microresonators. Dissipative solitons are stable pulses circulating around the circumference of a nonlinear resonator. Since their first demonstration, the process of dissipative soliton formation has been extensively studied and today it is rather considered as textbook knowledge. Several directions of further development are…
Cooperative operations between a solar observation satellite and a sounding-rocket telescope have measured the magnetic field strength in the photosphere and chromosphere above an active solar plage region. This is the first time that the magnetic field in the chromosphere has been charted all the way up to its top. This finding brings us closer to understanding how energy is transferred between layers of the Sun. Despite being the brightest object in the sky, the Sun still holds many mysteries…
Even in the world of the smallest particles with their own special rules, things cannot proceed infinitely fast. Physicists at the University of Bonn have now shown what the speed limit is for complex quantum operations. The study also involved scientists from MIT, the universities of Hamburg, Cologne and Padua, and the Jülich Research Center. The results are important for the realization of quantum computers, among other things. They are published in the prestigious journal Physical Review X, and covered…
The working group led by Prof. Stephan Schiller, Ph.D. from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has used a novel, high-precision laser spectroscopic experiment to measure the internal vibration of the simplest molecule. This allowed the researchers to investigate the wave character of the motion of atomic nuclei with unprecedented accuracy. They present their findings in the current edition of Nature Physics. Almost 100 years ago, a revolutionary discovery was made in the field of physics: microscopic matter exhibits wave properties….
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen show that under certain circumstances magnetic field sensing microswimmers can self-organize into a new phase whose theoretical description shares formal similarities with that of ultra-cold quantum gases. Contrary to inanimate ‘passive’ matter, motile ‘active’ matter is not constrained by the conservation laws of usual thermodynamics. This means that active matter cannot reach the state of equilibrium, but constantly spends energy in order to e.g. achieve motion. For more…
– successful tests onboard the ISS – Thousands of tons of space debris are currently orbiting the Earth, and the number is growing. Most of it is the remnants of completed space missions or decommissioned satellites. The dangerous thing about it is that even centimeter-sized pieces can cause immense damage in a collision with active satellites, spacecraft, and space stations. Researchers at the Technical University of Braunschweig, in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for New Materials (INM) in Saarbrücken, have…
A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg has coherently controlled nuclear excitations using suitably shaped X-ray light for the first time. In the experiment performed at the European Synchrotron ESRF, they achieved a temporal control stability of a few zeptoseconds. This forms the basis for new experimental approaches exploiting the control of nuclear dynamics which could lead to more precise future time standards and open new possibilities on the way to nuclear batteries….
Rydberg atoms are among the most promising candidates in the race of realizing a working quantum computer. In the new collaborative project „QRydDemo“, researchers led by the University of Stuttgart aim to realize a Rydberg quantum computer demonstrator together with an industrial partner by 2025. In order to reach this goal, they group Rydberg atoms in a two-dimensional optical trap structure and perform quantum logical operations by controlled entanglement and shifting of the atom traps. The Federal Ministry of Education…
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