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Category: energy – Page 2

Catching distant gamma-ray explosions with precisely aligned X-ray optics

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) rank among the most powerful explosions in the universe, releasing immense energy in intense flashes of gamma rays. The most distant GRBs originate from the era when the first stars and galaxies formed. Detecting them allows astronomers to probe the early universe and understand how the first heavy elements formed and how the earliest stellar populations lived and died. Missions like HiZ-GUNDAM, a satellite planned for launch in the 2030s by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), aim to detect these distant explosions in real time.

However, detecting GRBs presents a major challenge. These explosions appear unpredictably across the sky, and their afterglows fade rapidly. Astronomers must therefore detect each burst quickly and determine its position immediately so that other telescopes can observe it. Wide-field X-ray monitors provide one solution, as they can observe large regions of the sky and determine the direction of incoming signals.

Some designs use lobster-eye X-ray optics, inspired by the way lobsters’ compound eyes collect light from many directions simultaneously. Yet building a single optical system from multiple lobster-eye segments and aligning them precisely remains a difficult technical task.

Phase-changing VO₂ turns methane into propane and hydrogen more efficiently

Converting methane, the primary component of natural gas, into higher alkanes and hydrogen, could be highly advantageous. Alkanes, such as propane and butane, are easier to transport than methane and are used in a wider range of industries. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is a promising clean fuel used to power electrochemical devices that can generate continuous power, known as fuel cells.

Over the past decades, some energy engineers have been exploring the possibility of converting methane into hydrogen or complex hydrocarbons using photocatalysts. These are materials activated by sunlight or other types of light and that can drive chemical reactions.

Researchers at Université de Lille—CNRS, Sorbonne Université and other institutes in France recently introduced a new strategy for the photocatalytic conversion of methane into propane, which is widely used for heating, cooking, and transportation.

A tiny twist and synthetic diamond put superconductivity on a switch, opening a new route to lossless electronics

Researchers have discovered evidence that superconductivity can be controlled by influencing the surrounding environment, a finding that may lead to more efficient electronics down the road, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Physics.

Superconductivity, or the ability of certain materials to conduct electric currents without any energy loss when cooled below a critical temperature, is a property still not very well understood. While a major challenge, understanding more about its formation mechanisms could lead to better, more long-lasting materials as well as more powerful quantum devices.

Unlocking unusual superconductivity in a lightweight element

Superconductors—materials that can conduct electricity without energy loss—are crucial for next-generation high-efficiency, ultrafast electronics. However, most superconductors share a critical limitation: they lose their superconducting properties in strong magnetic fields. In contrast, a class of superconductors containing heavy elements can sustain an unusual type of superconductivity in magnetic fields beyond the conventional limit. Now, new research has demonstrated that this limitation can be overcome by sandwiching atomically thin films of a lightweight element called gallium between two other materials to engineer quantum interactions at the interfaces between the layers.

A paper describing the research, led by an interdisciplinary team at Penn State’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) for Nanoscale Science, was published in the journal Nature Materials. The team showed that when just three atomic layers of gallium are layered between graphene and a silicon carbide substrate, the resulting structure maintains superconductivity in magnetic fields that are parallel to the surface of the material, or in-plane, well above the expected limit.

“This discovery highlights the strength of collaborative, cross-disciplinary research fostered by the Penn State MRSEC,” said Cui-Zu Chang, professor of physics at Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team. “By bringing together expertise in materials synthesis, quantum transport and theoretical modeling, we were able to uncover a phenomenon that would have been difficult to realize within a single research group.”

Non-Stationary Load Extrapolation over Long Horizons Based on a Frequency-Consistent Diffusion Model

【】 Full article: (Authored by Yu Bai and Fei Meng, from University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, China.)

Engineering load signals support durability analysis because they reflect real service conditions. Long-duration load histories are essential for fatigue-life prediction and reliability assessment. However, long-term field measurements are often costly and difficult to obtain. Therefore, extending short measurements into representative long histories is practically important. This study proposes a frequency-consistent diffusion_model (FCDM) for long-horizon extrapolation of non-stationary bearing load signals under turning conditions. load_extrapolation.

Abstract

This study proposes a frequency-consistent diffusion model (FCDM) for long-horizon extrapolation of non-stationary bearing load signals. Condition tokens and spectral-consistency constraints are introduced to preserve spectral and fatigue-related characteristics during tenfold extrapolation. The generated signals are evaluated using PSD, band-energy proportion, Range-Mean distribution, and unit pseudo-damage. Compared with DDPM, FCDM better preserves dominant frequencies, harmonic structure, and band-energy allocation. The dominant frequency error is 1.02%, and the mean harmonic error is 0.52%. FCDM also shows smaller band-energy allocation errors across all frequency bands. In addition, it reproduces the bimodal clustering pattern in the Range-Mean distribution more accurately. The unit pseudo-damage is 1.0978 for FCDM and 1.1280 for DDPM. These results indicate that FCDM improves spectral fidelity and fatigue-related consistency in long-sequence load extrapolation.

Diffusion Model, Load Extrapolation, Frequency-Consistency

Megawatt structured light arrives with 3,070 optical vortices in one array

Optical vortices—light beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM)—are characterized by helical wavefronts and phase singularities. While they have been widely studied in recent decades, two fundamental limitations have restricted their broader impact: generating large numbers of vortices simultaneously and achieving high peak power in such configurations. Until now, large vortex arrays have been limited to low-power systems, whereas high-power demonstrations have typically involved only single vortices.

In a new paper published in Light: Science & Applications, a research team led by Professor Yoshiki Nakata at The University of Osaka reports the world’s first experimental realization of a megawatt-class large-scale optical vortex array comprising 3,070 phase-coherent vortices at a peak power of 58 megawatts. The result represents more than three orders of magnitude improvement in both vortex number and peak power compared with previous approaches.

Conventionally, Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) modes are expressed as the superposition of two Hermite–Gaussian (HG) modes with a π/2 phase shift. This constitutes the first revision of the HG–LG mode-conversion framework in three decades. The team reformulated this description into a three-mode representation that naturally integrates with multibeam interference geometry.

Leather gets a power upgrade with laser-written microsupercapacitors

Researchers have developed a simple and eco-friendly way to use a laser to turn natural leather into flexible and wearable energy devices. The new approach could lay the groundwork for more sustainable wearable electronics. In a paper in Optics Letters, the researchers demonstrate the new technique by creating microsupercapacitors on leather in various patterns, including a tiger, dragon and rabbit.

“Using a laser, we directly write conductive patterns onto vegetable-tanned leather to create microsupercapacitors that can store energy and help smooth electrical signals so that wearable electronics run more reliably,” said the research team leader Dong-Dong Han from Jilin University in China.

Unlike conventional devices that rely on synthetic materials and complex, chemical-heavy processes, our approach uses a natural, skin-friendly material and a one-step fabrication method. The microsupercapacitors are well-suited for flexible and comfortable wearable electronics because they are built on soft materials and can be shaped freely and integrated directly into products.

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