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AI agent helps prepare synchrotron X-ray experimental measurements, paving the way for autonomous operation
Artificial intelligence (AI) models are now used daily by many people worldwide, both for professional and personal purposes. Over the past decades, scientists specialized in various disciplines have also started using these models to conduct research or simplify their experimental practices.
Researchers at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory recently explored the possibility of using an AI-powered agent to prepare a synchrotron-based X-ray experiment. Synchrotrons are large research facilities at which electrons are accelerated to produce very bright X-rays, which can then be used to study the atomic structure of materials, molecules and biological samples.
In a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, the team at Stanford and SLAC proposed using an AI-based agent to prepare a real synchrotron X-ray experiment. They showed that this agent could autonomously plan actions, interpret observations and generate instrument-control commands to complete sample alignment.
Noise Proofing Molecules for New-Physics Searches
Certain molecules can be placed into states that are less sensitive to external noise, offering researchers a quiet system for probing fundamental physics.
Molecules are like tiny sandboxes for exploring fundamental physics. Within the molecular environment, bound electrons and nucleons can be exposed to exceptionally strong fields, inducing effects that can’t easily be observed elsewhere. By measuring transitions within these molecules, researchers can look for small deviations from theory, which could be signs of new physics beyond the standard model of particle physics. However, molecules are very sensitive to external fields, causing “noise” that can hide the small internally induced deviations. Yuiki Takahashi and colleagues at Caltech have come up with a potential solution, which counterintuitively uses external fields to make molecules immune to external fields [1]. By exposing small triatomic molecules to carefully tuned electromagnetic fields, the researchers have placed the molecules into special states where their sensitivity to noise is reduced by a factor of several hundred.