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Category: particle physics

Making the invisible visible: Space particles become observable through handheld invention

You can’t see, feel, hear, taste or smell them, but tiny particles from space are constantly raining down on us.

They come from cosmic rays—high-energy particles that can originate from exploding stars and other extreme astrophysical events far beyond our solar system. When the rays collide with atoms high in Earth’s protective atmosphere, they trigger a cascade of secondary particles. Among the most important of these new particles are muons, which can pass through the atmosphere and even penetrate into the ground.

An invention by University of Delaware physics professor Spencer Axani called CosmicWatch is putting the science of muons in the palms of experienced scientists and high school students alike.

New evidence for a particle system that ‘remembers’ its previous quantum states

In the future, quantum computers are anticipated to solve problems once thought unsolvable, from predicting the course of chemical reactions to producing highly reliable weather forecasts. For now, however, they remain extremely sensitive to environmental disturbances and prone to information loss.

A new study from the lab of Dr. Yuval Ronen at the Weizmann Institute of Science, published in Nature, presents fresh evidence for the existence of non-Abelian anyons—exotic particles considered prime candidates for building a fault-tolerant quantum computer. This evidence was produced within bilayer graphene, an ultrathin carbon crystal with unusual electronic behavior.

In quantum mechanics, particles also behave like waves, and their properties are described by a wave function, which can represent the state of a single particle or a system of particles. Physicists classify particles according to how the wave function of two identical particles changes when they exchange places. Until the 1980s, only two types of particles were known: bosons (such as photons), whose wave function remains unchanged when they exchange places, and fermions (such as electrons), whose wave function becomes inverted.

Antiferromagnetic metal exhibits diode-like behavior without external magnetic field

Antiferromagnetic (AF) materials are made up of atoms or molecules with atomic spins that align in antiparallel directions of their neighbors. The magnetism of each individual atom or molecule is canceled out by the one next to it to produce zero net magnetization.

Researchers in Japan have now discovered that an AF material, NdRu2Al10, has the ability to produce a diode-like effect, meaning electrical current can flow in one direction but not the other (nonreciprocal), similar to the junction of two semiconductors. Their research is published in Physical Review Letters.

Dark matter and neutrinos may interact, challenging standard model of the universe

Scientists are a step closer to solving one of the universe’s biggest mysteries as new research finds evidence that two of its least understood components may be interacting, offering a rare window into the darkest recesses of the cosmos.

The University of Sheffield findings relate to the relationship between dark matter, the mysterious, invisible substance that makes up about 85% of the matter in the universe, and neutrinos, one of the most fundamental and elusive subatomic particles. Scientists have overwhelming indirect evidence for the existence of dark matter, while neutrinos, though invisible and with an extremely small mass, have been observed using huge underground detectors.

The standard model of cosmology (Lambda-CDM), with its origins in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, posits that dark matter and neutrinos exist independently and do not interact with one another.

Going further with fusion, together

At 4 a.m., while most of New Jersey slept, a Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) physicist sat at his computer connected to a control room 3,500 miles away in Oxford, England. Years of experience running fusion experiments in the U.S. helped guide the U.K. team through delicate adjustments as they worked together to coax particles of plasma—the fourth state of matter—to temperatures that match those found at the heart of the sun.

This late-night, intercontinental collaboration happened many times from 2019 to 2024 during critical experiments at Tokamak Energy’s ST40 facility. It’s just one example of how PPPL is meeting the moment, leading collaborative efforts with private companies and other public institutions to make fusion power practical.

Fusion, the process of combining atoms to release energy, could be the source of a nearly inexhaustible supply of electricity. But there are still challenging scientific and engineering issues to overcome in the quest for power. That’s why scientists are increasingly working together to take fusion further.

Advanced quantum detectors are reinventing the search for dark matter

When it comes to understanding the universe, what we know is only a sliver of the whole picture.

Dark matter and dark energy make up about 95% of the universe, leaving only 5% “ordinary matter,” or what we can see. Dr. Rupak Mahapatra, an experimental particle physicist at Texas A&M University, designs highly advanced semiconductor detectors with cryogenic quantum sensors, powering experiments worldwide and pushing the boundaries to explore this most profound mystery.

Mahapatra likens our understanding of the universe—or lack thereof—to an old parable: “It’s like trying to describe an elephant by only touching its tail. We sense something massive and complex, but we’re only grasping a tiny part of it.”

Electrons that lag behind nuclei in 2D materials could pave way for novel electronics

One of the great successes of 20th-century physics was the quantum mechanical description of solids. This allowed scientists to understand for the first time how and why certain materials conduct electric current and how these properties could be purposefully modified. For instance, semiconductors such as silicon could be used to produce transistors, which revolutionized electronics and made modern computers possible.

To be able to mathematically capture the complex interplay between electrons and atomic nuclei and their motions in a solid, physicists had to make some simplifications. They assumed, for example, that the light electrons in an atom follow the motion of the much heavier atomic nuclei in a crystal lattice without any delay. For several decades, this Born-Oppenheimer approximation worked well.

Researchers build plasma accelerator that boosts electron energy and brightness at the same time

Researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), have designed innovative technology that can generate both high-energy and high-brightness electron bunches in an accelerator that is a fraction of the size of current particle accelerators.

This breakthrough has the potential to shrink the size of future particle colliders and X-ray free-electron lasers that researchers use to gain insight into nature’s fundamental building blocks and processes.

In the new study, the UCLA-led team developed a novel plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA), in which electrons gain energy by “surfing” a plasma wave rather than drawing energy from the electromagnetic field inside metal structures of conventional accelerators.

Worms as particle sweepers: How simple movement, not intelligence, drives environmental order

When observing small worms under a microscope, one might observe something very surprising: the worms appear to make a sweeping motion to clean their own environment. Physicists at the University of Amsterdam, Georgia Tech and Sorbonne Université/CNRS have now discovered the reason for this unexpected behavior.

When centimeter-long aquatic worms, such as T. tubifex or Lumbriculus variegatus, are placed in a Petri dish filled with sub-millimeter-sized sand particles, something surprising happens. Over time, the worms begin to spontaneously clean up their surroundings. They sweep particles into compact clusters, gradually reshaping and organizing their environment.

In a study that was published in Physical Review X this week, a team of researchers show that this remarkable sweeping behavior does not require a brain, or any kind of complex interaction between the worms and the particles. Instead, it emerges from the natural undulating motion and flexibility that the worms possess.

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