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Category: particle physics

From one frontier to another: The quantum revolution

Manchester’s quantum researchers are building on the Ferranti Mark I legacy, using ultra-pure silicon and single atoms to move quantum computing closer to real-world impact.

In February 1951, a machine the size of a room arrived at the University of Manchester.

The Ferranti Mark I, the world’s first commercially available general-purpose computer, came with 4,000 vacuum tubes, 100,000 soldered joints and six miles (10 kilometers) of wires. The 27 kilowatts of power it needed to operate is the equivalent of running roughly 600 midrange laptops today, yet at the time, it must have felt miraculous.

Molecular clock transitions tune out the noise in the hunt for new physics

Heavy polar molecules are some of the most sensitive tools physicists have for probing what lies beyond the Standard Model, the theory that describes the particles and forces we know about. But turning that sensitivity into precise, trustworthy measurements has long been held back by one stubborn problem: Stray electric and magnetic fields drown out the tiny signals researchers are actually looking for.

In new research published in Physical Review X, a team led by Yuiki Takahashi at the California Institute of Technology has found a way around this, engineering molecular states that can consistently tune out this electromagnetic noise.

Machine learning narrows search for additional particles in the Higgs boson family

What if the Higgs boson found in 2012 is not alone but is the only sibling we have encountered so far? Scientists at CERN discovered the particle that year, and it was a major discovery because it explained how other particles acquire mass. For a long time, scientists thought this was the final piece of the puzzle.

They have a framework called the Standard Model that describes the smallest particles in everything we see. This includes electrons in atoms and light particles called photons. However, this framework does not explain everything. It does not tell us about dark matter or why the universe has so much more matter than antimatter. It is like having a map that shows only half the world.

The discovery of the Higgs boson created new questions. Many physicists started wondering whether the Higgs we found is the only one of its kind. They began to ask whether there is a larger family of these particles hiding in the universe. If we find more members of this family, we might finally understand the parts of nature that the current framework misses.

Chocolate syrup-like fluid stores multiple interacting memories

Animals and electronic devices aren’t the only things with memory. Materials can retain memories of past deformations in their microscopic structure. A common example is a crease in a sheet of paper that has been folded then unfolded. Understanding this type of memory could benefit the design of materials that respond to changes in their environment in predictable ways.

It can also be a source of ideas about the various types of memory studied by neuroscientists, including how short-term and long-term memories interact and influence each other. Now, researchers at Penn State have shown that two different types of material memory can coexist in a simple mixture of small particles suspended in a viscous liquid. Like long-and short-term memories, these material memories interact and compete.

A paper describing the research was recently published and highlighted as an editors’ suggestion in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Shaking atoms to bring black-hole quantum chaos into the lab

Physicists have discovered a surprisingly simple way to reproduce one of the most fascinating models in modern physics—linked to black holes, quantum chaos and exotic electronic materials—using ultracold atoms trapped in light.

Instead of trying to build a highly complex system from scratch, the researchers show that gently “shaking” a standard optical lattice can transform it into an accurate simulator of the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) model, a theoretical model known for its extreme and unusual quantum behavior.

The findings are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Does dark energy really exist? Our work identifies cracks in the foundations of today’s cosmological model

According to our best understanding, the universe is expanding – and is doing so at an accelerating rate. This is believed to be caused by something called the “cosmological constant”, which was first proposed by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity. In recent decades, it has become better known as dark energy, which is believed to make up about 70% of the universe.

Crucial to this realisation were studies of Type Ia supernovae – exploding white dwarf stars. These are thought to emit a specific amount of light, which allows astronomers to determine their distances very accurately and thereby track the expansion of the universe. This work was awarded the 2011 Nobel prize in physics.

The accelerating expansion of the universe is thought to be due to negative pressure, an unusual property of dark energy that allows it to overcome the attractive force of gravity. Yet the exact nature of dark energy remains a puzzle. It cannot be explained by our best theory for the fundamental building blocks of the universe – known as the standard model of particle physics.

The Surprising Evidence our Universe is INSIDE a Black Hole

What if everything we know — every galaxy, every star, every atom — is actually inside a black hole? In this video, we explore the fascinating possibility that our entire universe could exist within a black hole embedded in a larger “parent” universe. This idea isn’t science fiction; it arises from real solutions to Einstein’s equations in general relativity and from modern efforts to connect gravity with quantum mechanics. We examine what physics predicts happens inside a black hole, how space and time behave at an event horizon, and why the Big Bang might resemble the birth of a black hole from the outside.

We also explore the deeper implications of this theory: whether a collapsing star in another universe could create a new expanding universe on the inside, how spin and entropy might relate to cosmic expansion, and what this could mean for the concept of a multiverse. Could every black hole be the seed of a new universe? And if so, what does that say about where we came from and the true structure of reality? This is one of the most mind-bending ideas in cosmology — and it challenges our very notion of what “inside” and “outside” even mean.

Why Flowing Spins Polarize Up or Down

One of the goals of spintronics is to flip the magnetization of ferromagnetic domains solely via an electrically controlled spin current flowing in a layer underneath. The antiferromagnet manganese germanide (Mn3Ge) is a prime candidate for providing that control thanks to the out-of-plane polarization of its spin currents. Now Mingxing Wu of the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have identified which of two mechanisms proposed by theorists is responsible for the polarization [1]. The answer is both.

The triangular lattice of Mn3Ge causes groups of three adjacent spins to orient themselves at 120° with respect to each other. That noncolinear arrangement engenders so-called Weyl points in the crystal’s band structure. Thanks to a quantum geometry property called Berry curvature, Weyl points act like internal magnetic fields that deflect electrons in a spin-dependent way.

Until the work of Wu and his colleagues, just how the deflection leads to out-of-plane polarization was unclear. It could conceivably arise either via a mechanism called spin swapping (SSW) or via the magnetic spin Hall effect (MSHE). To settle the question, the researchers subjected single-crystal strips of Mn3Ge topped with layers of permalloy (a nickel–iron alloy) to a technique called spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance (ST-FMR). The ST-FMR signal from MSHE depends on the orientation of the Mn3Ge lattice with respect to the spin current, whereas the signal from SSW does not. By creating differently oriented samples, Wu and his colleagues found that both mechanisms contribute to the out-of-plane spin polarization with comparable magnitudes. Now that the mystery has been solved, the next step is to harness both mechanisms for the magnetic-field-free switching of magnetization.

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