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Fiber setup compresses mid-infrared pulses to 187 femtoseconds using just 80 watts

Ultrashort mid-infrared (mid-IR) laser pulses are essential for applications such as molecular spectroscopy, nonlinear microscopy, and biomedical imaging, but their generation often relies on complex and power-intensive systems that are difficult to implement outside of specialized laboratories. These systems usually require high pump powers, elaborate optical setups, and precise alignment, which can limit their widespread adoption and practical use in everyday research and clinical settings.

In a paper published in the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, a team of researchers from SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur, report a compact, fiber-based method for generating clean ultrashort mid-IR pulses at significantly reduced input power.

The study demonstrates that high-quality pulse compression can be achieved using a holmium-doped ZBLAN photonic crystal fiber integrated into a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM), offering a simpler and more energy-efficient alternative to conventional systems.

Researchers mix X-rays and optical light to track speedy electrons in materials

To unlock materials of the future, including better photocatalysts or light-switchable superconductors, researchers need to understand how the valence electrons within materials respond to light at the atomic scale. Materials are made of atoms, and an atom’s outer electrons, or valence electrons, are responsible for chemical bonding as well as a material’s thermal, magnetic, and electronic properties.

But imaging valence electrons in bulk materials is extremely difficult because valence electrons are only a small subset of a typically large pool of electrons.

Now, researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have refined a way to track valence electrons using a unique method that shines both X-rays and lasers onto a material, then tracks the frequency generated by both sources. The method allows the researchers to understand more about extremely fast-moving valence electrons, including the symmetry of their local environment.

Stacked quantum materials enable precise spin control without external magnetic fields

Spintronics—a technology that harnesses the electron’s magnetic quantum states to carry information—could pave the way for a new generation of ultra-energy-efficient electronics. Yet a major challenge has been the ability to control these delicate quantum properties with sufficient precision for practical applications. By combining different quantum materials, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have now taken a decisive step forward, achieving unprecedented control over spin phenomena. The advance opens the door to next-generation low-power data processing and memory technologies.

Data centers, cloud services, AI and connected systems account for a rapidly growing share of global energy consumption. In the quest for new, more energy-efficient technological solutions, spin electronics, or spintronics, has proven to be a new and promising approach. Instead of relying solely on the movement of electric charge, spintronics use magnetic states to carry information. More specifically, it takes advantage of a quantum property of electrons known as spin, which makes electrons behave like tiny magnets.

“Just like a compass needle, an electron’s spin can point in one of two directions—up or down. These two directions can be used to represent digital information, in the same way today’s electronics use 0s and 1s,” explains Saroj Dash, Professor of Quantum Device Physics at Chalmers University of Technology.

Simulations suggest a breakthrough in understanding how turbulence develops

A new study revisits a century-old question about how turbulence starts. The findings could potentially influence not only aircraft engineering but even the design of mechanical heart valves, and treatment of heart disease. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Computer simulations at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology indicate that very small vortices may create increasingly larger swirls of flow—the opposite of the traditional view of how energy is transferred in turbulence.

Often seen in nature, from whirlpools to the shape of galaxies, vortices are one of the main flow structures that drive turbulence. The dominant idea over the last 100 years is that large swirling motions in a fluid break apart into smaller and smaller swirls, passing energy down the chain until it finally disappears—a process known as the forward cascade.

The Mass-Budget Discrepancy of 3I/ATLAS

Planetary systems — which serve as the natural birth sites of interstellar objects — originate from debris disks that contain at least ten times less mass than the host star. In addition, one expects a mass spectrum of ejected interstellar objects to contain at least ten times more mass in objects with masses that are orders of magnitude different from that of 3I/ATLAS. When these additional factors are included, we find that low-metallicity stars miss the required mass budget by at least 3 orders of magnitude. They cannot account for the interstellar population of 3I/ATLAS-like objects unless they are capable of ejecting to interstellar space more than a thousand times the heavy-element content of their planetary disks.

In conclusion, either the inferred radius or number density of the population of 3I/ATLAS-like objects are overestimated or their association with metal-poor stars is incorrect.

Breakthrough to Strengthen Bones Could Reverse Osteoporosis

Research points to a key bone-strengthening mechanism at work in the body, which could be targeted to treat the bone-weakening disease, osteoporosis.

Led by scientists from the University of Leipzig in Germany and Shandong University in China, the 2025 study identified the cell receptor GPR133 (also known as ADGRD1) as being crucial to bone density, via bone-building cells called osteoblasts.

Variations in the GPR133 gene had previously been linked to bone density, leading researchers to turn their attention to the protein it encoded.

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