Phys.org Physics

• JUNO experiment delivers first physics results two months after completion

  The Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully completed the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) and released its first physics results.

• The hidden rule behind ignition: An analytic law governing multi-shock implosions for ultrahigh compression

  Physicists at the University of Osaka have unveiled a breakthrough theoretical framework that uncovers the hidden physical rule behind one of the most powerful compression methods in laser fusion science—the stacked-shock implosion.

• Study maps the time and energy patterns of electron pairs in ultrafast pulses

  The ability to precisely study and manipulate electrons in electron microscopes could open new possibilities for the development of both ultrafast imaging techniques and quantum technologies.

• New magnetic component discovered in the Faraday effect after nearly two centuries

  Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discovered that the magnetic component of light plays a direct role in the Faraday effect, overturning a 180-year-old assumption that only its electric field mattered.

• Hollow glass fiber sensors withstand extreme radiation in particle accelerator tests

  A slender glass fiber no thicker than a human hair placed across a particle beam could improve accelerator monitoring. A team is testing the use of hollow-core optical fibers to measure the profile and position of the beams extracted from the Super Proton Synchrotron, CERN's second-largest accelerator, which feeds the experiments located in the North Area.

• Physicists drive antihydrogen breakthrough at CERN with record trapping technique

  Physicists from Swansea University have played the leading role in a scientific breakthrough at CERN, developing an innovative technique that increases the antihydrogen trapping rate by a factor of ten.

• New cable design mitigates flaws in superconducting wires

  When current flows through a wire, it doesn't always have a perfect path. Tiny defects within the wire mean current must travel a more circuitous route, a problem for engineers and manufacturers seeking reliable equipment.

• Quantum teleportation between photons from two distant light sources achieved

  Everyday life on the internet is insecure. Hackers can break into bank accounts or steal digital identities. Driven by AI, attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Quantum cryptography promises more effective protection. It makes communication secure against eavesdropping by relying on the laws of quantum physics. However, the path toward a quantum internet is still fraught with technical hurdles.

• Efficient quantum process tomography for enabling scalable optical quantum computing

  Optical quantum computers are gaining attention as a next-generation computing technology with high speed and scalability. However, accurately characterizing complex optical processes, where multiple optical modes interact to generate quantum entanglement, has been considered an extremely challenging task.

• How most of the universe's visible mass is generated: Experiments explore emergence of hadron mass

  Deep in the heart of the matter, some numbers don't add up. For example, while protons and neutrons are made of quarks, nature's fundamental building blocks bound together by gluons, their masses are much larger than the individual quarks from which they are formed.

• Sharper MRI scans may be on horizon thanks to new physics-based model

  Researchers at Rice University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have unveiled a physics-based model of magnetic resonance relaxation that bridges molecular-scale dynamics with macroscopic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) signals, promising new insight into how contrast agents interact with water molecules. This advancement paves the way for sharper medical imaging and safer diagnostics using MRI.

• Quantum imaging settles 20-year debate on gold surface electron spin direction

  Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS) have definitively resolved a two-decade-long controversy regarding the direction of electron spin on the surface of gold.

• Supercomputer simulates quantum chip in unprecedented detail

  A broad association of researchers from across Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley have collaborated to perform an unprecedented simulation of a quantum microchip, a key step forward in perfecting the chips required for this next-generation technology. The simulation used more than 7,000 NVIDIA GPUs on the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) user facility.

• Ultracold potassium-cesium molecules assembled in absolute ground state

  Researchers from Hanns-Christoph Nägerl's group have produced the world's first ultracold KCs molecules in their absolute ground state. Starting by mixing clouds of potassium and cesium atoms cooled almost to absolute zero temperature, they were able to use a combination of magnetic fields and laser beams to associate pairs of freely moving atoms into chemically stable molecules.

• New monitor now operational in the Large Hadron Collider

  A novel beam diagnostic instrument developed by researchers in the University of Liverpool's QUASAR Group has been approved for use in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator.

• Lead-free alternative discovered for essential electronics component

  Ferroelectric materials are used in infrared cameras, medical ultrasounds, computer memory and actuators that turn electric properties into mechanical properties and vice-versa. Most of these essential materials, however, contain lead and can therefore be toxic.

• New photonic chips passively convert laser light into multiple colors on demand

  Over the past several decades, researchers have been making rapid progress in harnessing light to enable all sorts of scientific and industrial applications. From creating stupendously accurate clocks to processing the petabytes of information zipping through data centers, the demand for turnkey technologies that can reliably generate and manipulate light has become a global market worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

• Raman quantum memory demonstrates near-unity performance

  Over the past decades, quantum physicists and engineers have developed numerous technologies that harness the principles of quantum mechanics to push the boundaries of classical information science. Among these advances, quantum memories stand out as promising devices for storing and retrieving quantum information encoded in light or other physical carriers.

• Electrical control of spin currents in graphene via ferroelectric switching achieved

  A collaborative European research team led by physicists from Slovak Academy of Sciences has theorized a new approach to control spin currents in graphene by coupling it to a ferroelectric In2Se3 monolayer. Using first-principles and tight-binding simulations, the researcher showed that the ferroelectric switching of In2Se3 can reverse the direction of the spin current in graphene acting as an electrical spin switch. This discovery offers a novel pathway toward energy-efficient, nonvolatile, and magnet-free spintronic devices, marking a key step toward the fabrication of next-generation spin-based logic and memory systems to control spin textures.

• HD⁺ ions cooled to 18 mK yield most precise vibrational-rotational spectra to date

  A research team from the Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology (APM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made significant progress in precisely measuring the vibrational-rotational spectra of hydrogen molecular ions (HD⁺).

• Reading a quantum clock costs more energy than running it, study finds

  A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a surprising source of entropy in quantum timekeeping—the act of measurement itself. In a study published in Physical Review Letters, scientists demonstrate that the energy cost of "reading" a quantum clock far outweighs the cost of running it, with implications for the design of future quantum technologies.

• Controlling triple quantum dots in a zinc oxide semiconductor

  Quantum computers have the potential to solve certain calculations exponentially faster than a classic computer could, but more research is desperately needed to make their practical use a reality. Quantum computers use a basic unit of information called quantum bits (qubits) to run—like how classical computers use a binary system of 0s and 1s, but with many more possibilities.

• How sound and light act alike—and not—at the smallest scale

  A world-famous light experiment from 1801 has now been carried out with sound for the first time. Research by physicists in Leiden has produced new insights that could be applied in 5G devices and the emerging field of quantum acoustics. The study is published in the journal Optics Letters.

• Heavy atomic nuclei are not as symmetric as previously thought, physicists find

  Many heavy atomic nuclei are shaped more or less like squashed rugby balls than fully inflated ones, according to a theoretical study by RIKEN nuclear physicists published in The European Physical Journal A. This unexpected finding overturns the consensus held for more than half a century.

• Physicists unveil system to solve long-standing barrier to new generation of supercomputers

  The dream of creating game-changing quantum computers—supermachines that encode information in single atoms rather than conventional bits—has been hampered by the formidable challenge known as quantum error correction.