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Category: particle physics – Page 2

Arianna Gleason is an award-winning scientist at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory who studies matter in its most extreme forms—from roiling magma in the center of our planet to the conditions inside the heart of distant stars. During Fusion Energy Week, Gleason discussed the current state of fusion energy research and how SLAC is helping push the field forward.

Fusion is at the heart of every star. The tremendous pressure and temperature at the center of a star fuses atoms together, creating many of the elements you see on the periodic table and generating an immense amount of energy.

Fusion is exciting, because it could provide unlimited energy to our . We’re trying to replicate here on Earth, though it’s a tremendous challenge for science and engineering.

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In collisions of argon and scandium atomic nuclei, scientists from the international NA61/SHINE experiment have observed a clear anomaly indicative of a violation of one of the most important symmetries of the quark world: the approximate flavor symmetry between up and down quarks.

The existence of the anomaly may be due to hitherto unknown inadequacies in current nuclear models, but the potential connection to the long-sought-after “new physics” cannot be ruled out.

If we were to assemble a structure using the same number of wooden and plastic blocks, we would expect the proportions between the blocks of the two types not to alter after it has been dismantled. Physicists have so far lived in the belief that a similar of the initial and final states, called flavor symmetry, occurs in collisions between particles containing up and down quarks.

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Technology is being pushed to its very limits. The upgrades to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN slated for the next few years will increase data transfer rates beyond what the current neutrino detector for the FASER experiment can cope with, requiring it to be replaced by a new kind of more powerful detector.

This is a task that physicist Professor Matthias Schott from the University of Bonn will be tackling.

Extremely lightweight, electrically neutral and found almost everywhere in the universe, neutrinos are among its most ubiquitous particles and thus one of its basic building blocks. To researchers, however, these virtually massless elementary particles are still “ghost particles.”

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The rules about magnetic order may need to be rewritten. Researchers have discovered that chromium selenide (Cr₂Se₃) — traditionally non-magnetic in bulk form — transforms into a magnetic material when reduced to atomically thin layers. This finding contradicts previous theoretical predictions, and opens new possibilities for spintronics applications. This could lead to faster, smaller, and more efficient electronic components for smartphones, data storage, and other essential technologies.

An international research team from Tohoku University, Université de Lorraine (Synchrotron SOLEIL), the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC), High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, and National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology successfully grew two-dimensional Cr₂Se₃ thin films on graphene using molecular beam epitaxy. By systematically reducing the thickness from three layers to one layer and analyzing them with high-brightness synchrotron X-rays, the team made a surprising discovery. This finding challenges conventional theoretical predictions that two-dimensional materials cannot maintain magnetic order.

“When we first observed the ferromagnetic behavior in these ultra-thin films, we were genuinely shocked,” explains Professor Takafumi Sato (WPI-AIMR, Tohoku University), the lead researcher. “Conventional theory told us this shouldn’t happen. What’s even more fascinating is that the thinner we made the films, the stronger the magnetic properties became—completely contrary to what we expected.”

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The operation of quantum technologies relies on the reliable realization and control of quantum states, particularly entanglement. In the context of quantum physics, entanglement entails a connection between particles, whereby measuring one determines the result of measuring the other even when they are distant from each other, and in a way that defies any intuitive explanation.

A key challenge in the development of reliable quantum technologies is that entanglement is highly susceptible to noise (i.e., random interactions with the environment). These interactions with noise can adversely impact this desired quantum state of affairs and, in turn, reduce the performance of quantum technologies.

Researchers at Shandong University in China and National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan recently implemented a key step to experimentally recover hidden quantum correlations from higher-dimensional entangled states.

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Buried deep in the ice in the Antarctic are “eyes” that can see elementary particles called neutrinos, and what they’ve observed is puzzling scientists: a remarkably strong neutrino signal accompanied by a surprisingly weak gamma-ray emission in the galaxy NGC 1068, also known as the Squid galaxy.

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Free-range atoms, roaming around without restrictions, have been captured on camera for the first time – enabling physicists to take a closer look at long predicted quantum phenomena.

It’s a bit like snapping a shot of a rare bird in your back garden, after a long time of only ever hearing reports of them in the area, and seeing the food in your bird feeder diminish each day. Instead of birdwatching, though, we’re talking about quantum physics.

The US researchers behind the breakthrough carefully constructed an “atom-resolved microscopy” camera system that first puts atoms in a contained cloud, where they roam freely. Then, laser light freezes the atoms in position to record them.

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IN A NUTSHELL 🔬 Scientists have measured the speed of quantum entanglement for the first time, marking a major milestone in quantum physics. 💡 The study uses attosecond precision to track electron motion, offering unprecedented insight into quantum dynamics. 🔗 Quantum entanglement shows how particles can be interconnected over vast distances, defying traditional physics. 🚀

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Quantum technologies, which leverage quantum mechanical effects to process information, could outperform their classical counterparts in some complex and advanced tasks. The development and real-world deployment of these technologies partly relies on the ability to transfer information between different types of quantum systems effectively.

A long-standing challenge in the field of quantum technology is converting quantum signals carried by microwave photons (i.e., particles of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range) into optical photons (i.e., visible or near visible light particles). Devices designed to perform this conversion are known as microwave-to-optical transducers.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology recently developed a new microwave-to-optical transducer based on rare-earth ion-doped crystals. Their on-chip transducer, outlined in a paper published in Nature Physics, was implemented using ytterbium-171 ions doped in a YVO4 crystal.

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