Using a time lens, Columbia Engineers resolve single photons 70x faster than other techniques, another step towards advancing quantum information processing. Light has long been used to transmit information in many of our everyday electronic devices. Because light is made of quantum particles called photons, it will also play an important role in information processing in the coming generation of quantum devices. But first, researchers need to gain control of individual photons. Writing in Optica, Columbia Engineers propose using a…
An international research team led by scientists at the University of Oldenburg has succeeded in manipulating the energy-level structure in an ultra-thin sample in such a way that this semiconductor, which normally has a low luminescence yield, began to emit light. Whether or not a solid can emit light, for instance as a light-emitting diode (LED), depends on the energy levels of the electrons in its crystalline lattice. An international team of researchers led by University of Oldenburg physicists Dr…
The Webb team has now approved 10 out of 17 science instrument modes; since last week we added (14) MIRI imaging, (2) NIRCam wide-field slitless spectroscopy, and our final NIRISS mode, (10) single-object slitless spectroscopy. As we ramp down the final commissioning activities, some openings in the schedule have appeared. The team has started to take some of the first science data, getting it ready to release starting July 12, 2022, which will mark the official end of commissioning Webb and…
Research team led by Göttingen University combine two techniques to achieve isotropic super-resolution imaging. Over the last two decades, microscopy has seen unprecedented advances in speed and resolution. However, cellular structures are essentially three-dimensional, and conventional super-resolution techniques often lack the necessary resolution in all three directions to capture details at a nanometer scale. A research team led by Göttingen University, including the University of Würzburg and the Center for Cancer Research in the US, investigated a super-resolution imaging technique…
Communication networks need nodes at which information is processed or rerouted. Physicists at the University of Basel have now developed a network node for quantum communication networks that can store single photons in a vapor cell and pass them on later. In quantum communication networks, information is transmitted by single particles of light (photons). At the nodes of such a network buffer elements are needed which can temporarily store, and later re-emit, the quantum information contained in the photons. Researchers…
Reading between the lines to model our galaxy’s central black hole. Looks can be deceiving. The light from an incandescent bulb seems steady, but it flickers 120 times per second. Because the brain only perceives an average of the information it receives, this flickering is blurred and the perception of constant illumination is a mere illusion. While light cannot escape a black hole, the bright glow of rapidly orbiting gas (recall the images of M87’s black hole and Sgr A*)…
… to look into longitudinal plasmonic field in a nanocavity at subnano-scale. In a research work published June 19 in Journal of the American Chemical Society reported an innovative study that a group of scientists who have been engaged in Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), made a nano-ruler to look deeply into longitudinal plasmonic field in a nanocavity. SERS is a highly sensitive and powerful spectral analysis technique applicable in various fields. In contrast to weak Raman scattering, SERS realized a dramatically enhanced Raman…
A synthetic stub lattice in ring resonators represents a significant step toward construction of more complicated lattices in multiple rings associated with synthetic frequency dimensions. Synthetic dimensions in photonics offer exciting new ways to manipulate light, to study physical phenomena with exotic connectivities, and explore higher-dimensional physics. Dynamically modulated ring resonator systems, where resonant modes are coupled to construct a synthetic frequency dimension, can provide great experimental flexibility and reconfigurability. Construction of complex synthetic lattices, such as Lieb lattices and…
MIT engineers expand the capabilities of these ultrasensitive nanoscale detectors, with potential uses for quantum computing and biological sensing. Quantum sensors, which detect the most minute variations in magnetic or electrical fields, have enabled precision measurements in materials science and fundamental physics. But these sensors have only been capable of detecting a few specific frequencies of these fields, limiting their usefulness. Now, researchers at MIT have developed a method to enable such sensors to detect any arbitrary frequency, with no…
Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have developed tiny translucent slides capable of producing two very different images by manipulating the direction in which light travels through them. As light passes through the slide, an image of Australia can be seen, but when you flip the slide and look again, an image of the Sydney Opera House is visible. The pair of images created is just one example of an untapped number of possibilities. The ability to produce two…
Imagine a road with two lanes in each direction. One lane is for slow cars, and the other is for fast ones. For electrons moving along a quantum wire, researchers in Cambridge and Frankfurt have discovered that there are also two ‘lanes’, but electrons can take both at the same time! Current in a wire is carried by the flow of electrons. When the wire is very narrow (one-dimensional, 1D) then electrons cannot overtake each other, as they strongly repel…
Using a newly developed technique, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg have measured the very small difference in the magnetic properties of two isotopes of highly charged neon in an ion trap with previously inaccessible accuracy. Comparison with equally extremely precise theoretical calculations of this difference allows a record-level test of quantum electrodynamics (QED). The agreement of the results is an impressive confirmation of the standard model of physics, allowing conclusions regarding the properties…
Sterile neutrino, physics fundamentals among interpretations of anomalous results. New scientific results confirm an anomaly seen in previous experiments, which may point to an as-yet-unconfirmed new elementary particle, the sterile neutrino, or indicate the need for a new interpretation of an aspect of standard model physics, such as the neutrino cross section, first measured 60 years ago. Los Alamos National Laboratory is the lead American institution collaborating on the Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transitions (BEST) experiment, results of which were…
University of Arizona astronomers have identified five examples of a new class of stellar system. They’re not quite galaxies and only exist in isolation. The new stellar systems contain only young, blue stars, which are distributed in an irregular pattern and seem to exist in surprising isolation from any potential parent galaxy. The stellar systems – which astronomers say appear through a telescope as “blue blobs” and are about the size of tiny dwarf galaxies – are located within the…
Ultrafast light-driven control of magnetization on the nanometer length scale is key to achieve competitive bit sizes in next generation data storage technology. Researchers at Max Born Institute in Berlin and of the large scale facility Elettra in Trieste, Italy, have successfully demonstrated the ultrafast emergence of all-optical switching by generating a nanometer scale grating by interference of two pulses in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range. The physics of optically driven magnetization dynamics on the femtosecond time scale has become…
Samples from the Moon’s Oceanus Procellarum, an ancient mare basalt whose name translates to “Ocean of Storms,” may be able to calm at least one scientific squall: the source of lunar water. China’s lunar lander Chang’E-5 delivered the first real-time, on-site definitive confirmation of water signal in the basalt’s rocks and soil via on-board spectral analysis in 2020. The finding was validated through laboratory analysis of samples the lander returned in 2021. Now, the Chang’E-5 team has determined where the…
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