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Category: particle physics

When the Nobel Prize-winning US physicist Robert Hofstadter and his team fired highly energetic electrons at a small vial of hydrogen at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1,956 they opened the door to a new era of physics.

Until then, it was thought that protons and neutrons, which make up an atom’s nucleus, were the most fundamental particles in nature.

They were considered to be ‘dots’ in space, lacking physical dimensions. Now it suddenly became clear that these particles were not fundamental at all, and had a size and complex internal structure as well.

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Quantum technology typically employs qubits (quantum bits) consisting of, for example, single electrons, photons or atoms. A group of TU Delft researchers has now demonstrated the ability to teleport an arbitrary qubit state from a single photon onto an optomechanical device—consisting of a mechanical structure comprising billions of atoms. Their breakthrough research, now published in Nature Photonics, enables real-world applications such as quantum internet repeater nodes while also allowing quantum mechanics itself to be studied in new ways.

Quantum optomechanics

The field of quantum optomechanics uses optical means to control mechanical motion in the quantum regime. The first quantum effects in microscale mechanical devices were demonstrated about ten years ago. Focused efforts have since resulted in entangled states between optomechanical devices as well as demonstrations of an optomechanical quantum memory. Now, the group of Simon Gröblacher, of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience and the Department of Quantum Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Campinas in Brazil, has shown the first successful teleportation of an arbitrary optical qubit state onto a micromechanical quantum memory.

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Circa 2009

The futuristic thought of antimatter that is typically related to sci-fi movies may one day be able to provide propulsion to vehicles. Antimatter, is an exact oppposite copy of matter. Identical to matter, but with its electrical charge completely opposite of the original matter. Think of a battery with a positive and negative pole. The positive pole repsresenting matter, and the negative pole representing antimatter.

Antimatter is the exact oposite of matter. A definition as provided by Wikipedia concludes that antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example, an antielectron (a positron, an electron with a positive charge) and an antiproton (a proton with a negative charge) could form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing matter and antimatter would lead to the annihilation of both in the same way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs.

Seems like a bunch of info for the physicists out there. But where does antimatter come in for vehicle propulsion and how does it apply to electric vehicles. The violent explosion created when matter and anitmatter collide results in considerable energy in the form of movement of protons and electrons similar to the proces of electricity moving, though at a signifacntly higher rate. This explosion, if harnessed correctly could provide thrust to a vehicle.

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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have achieved a near 100 percent increase in the amount of antimatter created in the laboratory.

Using targets with micro-structures on the laser interface, the team shot a high-intensity laser through them and saw a 100 percent increase in the amount of antimatter (also known as positrons). The research appears in Applied Physics Letters.

Previous research using a tiny gold sample created about 100 billion particles of antimatter. The new experiments double that.

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Remember the philosophical argument our universe is a simulation? Well, a team of astrophysicists say they’ve created the biggest simulated universe yet. But you won’t find any virtual beings in it—or even planets or stars.

The simulation is 9.6 billion light-years to a side, so its smallest structures are still enormous (the size of small galaxies). The model’s 2.1 trillion particles simulate the dark matter glue holding the universe together.

Named Uchuu, or Japanese for “outer space,” the simulation covers some 13.8 billion years and will help scientists study how dark matter has driven cosmic evolution since the Big Bang.

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The goal of tackling global warming by turning carbon dioxide into fuel could be one step closer with researchers using a supercomputer to identify a group of “single-atom” catalysts that could play a key role.

Researchers from QUT’s Centre for Materials Science, led by Associate Professor Liangzhi Kou, were part of an international study that used theoretical modelling to identify six metals (nickel, niobium, palladium, rhenium, rhodium, zirconium) that were found to be effective in a reaction that can convert into sustainable and clean energy sources.

The study published in Nature Communications involved QUT researchers Professor Aijun Du, Professor Yuantong Gu and Dr. Lin Ju.

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Scientists managed to arrange the electrons into a honeycomb-like lattice by sandwiching them in an electric field between two atom-thin layers of tungsten compounds, according to research published in the journal Nature last week. The ability to tame them — which scientists accomplished by exploiting the tiniest differences in the atomic structures of the two tungsten layers — marks an incredible experimental achievement that has, until now, eluded the most accomplished labs in physics.

Other researchers have claimed that they created Wigner crystals in the past, and Nature News notes that they had some convincing evidence. But no one’s actually presented imaged evidence of their crystal before, study coauthor and University of California, Berkeley physicist Feng Wang told Nature News in the physicist’s version of a microphone drop.

“If you say you have an electron crystal, show me the crystal,” he said.

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Since the discovery of superconductivity in Sr2RuO4 in 1,994 hundreds of studies have been published on this compound, which have suggested that Sr2RuO4 is a very special system with unique properties. These properties make Sr2RuO4 a material with great potential, for example, for the development of future technologies including superconducting spintronics and quantum electronics by virtue of its ability to carry lossless electrical currents and magnetic information simultaneously. An international research team led by scientists at the University of Konstanz has been now able to answer one of the most interesting open questions on Sr2RuO4: why does the superconducting state of this material exhibit some features that are typically found in materials known as ferromagnets, which are considered being antagonists to superconductors? The team has found that Sr2RuO4 hosts a new form of magnetism, which can coexist with superconductivity and exists independently of superconductivity as well. The results have been published in the current issue of Nature Communications.

After a research study that lasted several years and involved 26 researchers from nine different universities and research institutions, the missing piece of the puzzle seems to have been found. Alongside the University of Konstanz, the universities of Salerno, Cambridge, Seoul, Kyoto and Bar Ilan as well as the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, the Paul Scherrer Institute and the Centro Nazionale delle Ricerche participated in the study.

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