Lasing – the emission of a collimated light beam of light with a well-defined wavelength (color) and phase – results from a self-organization process, in which a collection of emission centers synchronizes itself to produce identical light particles (photons). A similar self-organized synchronization phenomenon can also lead to the generation of coherent vibrations – a phonon laser, where phonon denotes, in analogy to photons, the quantum particles of sound. Photon lasing was first demonstrated approximately 60 years ago and, coincidentally,…
TU Freiberg develops new model for pyroelectric reactions Pyroelectricity is a phenomenon in physics in which heat can be converted into electricity via certain crystals or into a voltage that can be used for chemical reactions. While the first application is already used in devices such as motion detectors today, the second application, although well-known, has not yet been sufficiently described on a theoretical basis. A team of physicists at TU Bergakademie Freiberg has now found a way to describe…
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used quantum optics to advance state-of-the-art microscopy and illuminate a path to detecting material properties with greater sensitivity than is possible with traditional tools. “We showed how to use squeezed light – a workhorse of quantum information science – as a practical resource for microscopy,” said Ben Lawrie of ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division, who led the research with Raphael Pooser of ORNL’s Computational Sciences and Engineering Division. “We…
The “IceCube” neutrino observatory deep in the ice of the South Pole has already brought spectacular new insights into cosmic incidents of extremely high energies. In order to investigate the cosmic origins of elementary particles with even higher energies, Prof. Elisa Resconi from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now started an international initiative to build a neutrino telescope several cubic kilometers in size in the northeastern Pacific. Astronomers observe the light that comes to us from distant celestial…
Scientists at Osaka University use extremely intense laser pulses to create magnetized-plasma conditions comparable to those surrounding a black hole, study that may help explain the still mysterious X-rays that can be emitted from some celestial bodies. Laser Engineering at Osaka University have successfully used short, but extremely powerful laser blasts to generate magnetic field reconnection inside a plasma. This work may lead to a more complete theory of X-ray emission from astronomical objects like black holes. In addition to…
Rice physicists set far-more-accurate limits on speed of quantum information Nature’s speed limits aren’t posted on road signs, but Rice University physicists have discovered a new way to deduce them that is better — infinitely better, in some cases — than previous methods. “The big question is, ‘How fast can anything — information, mass, energy — move in nature?’” said Kaden Hazzard, a theoretical quantum physicist at Rice. “It turns out that if somebody hands you a material, it is…
Cosmologists have zoomed in on the smallest clumps of dark matter in a virtual universe – which could help us to find the real thing in space. An international team of researchers, including Durham University, UK, used supercomputers in Europe and China to focus on a typical region of a computer-generated universe. The zoom they were able to achieve is the equivalent of being able to see a flea on the surface of the Moon. This allowed them to make…
A team of astronomers have identified the first direct evidence that groups of stars can tear apart their planet-forming disc, leaving it warped and with tilted rings. This new research suggests exotic planets, not unlike Tatooine in Star Wars, may form in inclined rings in bent discs around multiple stars. The results were made possible thanks to observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Our Solar System is remarkably…
New research demonstrates how the use of molecules in quantum computing leads to fewer errors. The technology behind the quantum computers of the future is fast developing, with several different approaches in progress. Many of the strategies, or “blueprints,” for quantum computers rely on atoms or artificial atom-like electrical circuits. In a new theoretical study in the journal Physical Review X, a group of physicists at Caltech demonstrates the benefits of a lesser-studied approach that relies not on atoms but…
The process occurs in active-core nuclei. A molecular gas cloud that accumulates in the central region is blown away by radiation from the black hole’s accretion disk, forming a huge expanding hot bubble, whose radius can reach 300 light years. Black holes can expel a thousand times more matter than they capture. The mechanism that governs both ejection and capture is the accretion disk, a vast mass of gas and dust spiraling around the black hole at extremely high speeds….
High-precision measurements of the mass of the deuteron, the nucleus of heavy hydrogen, provide new insights into the reliability of fundamental quantities in atomic and nuclear physics. This is reported in the journal “Nature” by a collaboration led by the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics Heidelberg, Germany, and partners from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research Darmstadt and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz, Germany. Thus, data directly related to the atomic mass standard,…
A new study from The University of Texas at Austin is helping scientists piece together the ancient climate of Mars by revealing how much rainfall and snowmelt filled its lake beds and river valleys 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago. The study, published in Geology, represents the first time that researchers have quantified the precipitation that must have been present across the planet, and it comes out as the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is making its way to the…
GREGOR, the largest solar telescope in Europe, which is operated by a German consortium and located on Teide Observatory, Spain, has obtained unprecedented images of the fine-structure of the Sun. Following a major redesign of GREGOR’s optics, carried out by a team of scientists and engineers from the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics (KIS), the Sun can be observed at a higher resolution than before from Europe. The Sun is our star and has a profound influence on our planet,…
Theory suggests that quantum critical points may be analogous to black holes as places where all sorts of strange phenomena can exist in a quantum material. Now scientists are trying to pin down where this particular quantum critical point might be. Among all the curious states of matter that can coexist in a quantum material, jostling for preeminence as temperature, electron density and other factors change, some scientists think a particularly weird juxtaposition exists at a single intersection of factors,…
A new tool to analyze molecules is 100 times faster than previous methods Spectroscopy is an important tool of observation in many areas of science and industry. Infrared spectroscopy is especially important in the world of chemistry where it is used to analyze and identify different molecules. The current state-of-the-art method can make approximately 1 million observations per second. UTokyo researchers have greatly surpassed this figure with a new method about 100 times faster. From climate science to safety systems,…
New toolbox for the nanooptics allows the theoretical description to the highest accurate level possiple With the highest possible spatial resolution of less than a millionth of a millimetre, electron microscopes make it possible to study the properties of materials at the atomic level and thus demonstrate the realm of quantum mechanics. Quantum-physical fundamentals can be studied particularly well by the interactions between electrons and photons. Excited with laser light, for example, the energy, mass or velocity of the electrons…
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