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Category: particle physics – Page 193

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have used two-dimensional condensed matter physics to understand the quark interactions in neutron stars, simplifying the study of these densest cosmic entities. This work helps to describe low-energy excitations in dense nuclear matter and could unveil new phenomena in extreme densities, propelling advancements in the study of neutron stars and comparisons with heavy-ion collisions.

Understanding the behavior of nuclear matter—including the quarks and gluons that make up the protons and neutrons of atomic nuclei—is extremely complicated. This is particularly true in our world, which is three dimensional. Mathematical techniques from condensed matter physics that consider interactions in just one spatial dimension (plus time) greatly simplify the challenge. Using this two-dimensional approach, scientists solved the complex equations that describe how low-energy excitations ripple through a system of dense nuclear matter. This work indicates that the center of neutron stars, where such dense nuclear matter exists in nature, may be described by an unexpected form.

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Using machine learning, scientists discovered the ‘first statistically robust evidence for neutrino emissions from the inner parts of the Milky Way.’

Scientists detected a high-energy neutrino emission from within the Milky Way for the very first time using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a press statement reveals.

“Confirming the existence of this long-sought signal paves the way for the future of astroparticle physics in our galaxy,” explained Luigi Antonio Fusco in a related Perspective.

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Quantum computing could revolutionize our world. For specific and crucial tasks, it promises to be exponentially faster than the zero-or-one binary technology that underlies today’s machines, from supercomputers in laboratories to smartphones in our pockets. But developing quantum computers hinges on building a stable network of qubits—or quantum bits—to store information, access it and perform computations.

Yet the qubit platforms unveiled to date have a common problem: They tend to be delicate and vulnerable to outside disturbances. Even a stray photon can cause trouble. Developing fault-tolerant qubits—which would be immune to external perturbations—could be the ultimate solution to this challenge.

A team led by scientists and engineers at the University of Washington has announced a significant advancement in this quest. In a pair of papers published June 14 in Nature and June 22 in Science, the researchers report that in experiments with flakes of semiconductor materials—each only a single layer of atoms thick—they detected signatures of “fractional quantum anomalous Hall” (FQAH) states.

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The use of single-photon.

A photon is a particle of light. It is the basic unit of light and other electromagnetic radiation, and is responsible for the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Photons have no mass, but they do have energy and momentum. They travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, and can have different wavelengths, which correspond to different colors of light. Photons can also have different energies, which correspond to different frequencies of light.

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Overlapping lattices and innovative techniques have unlocked the secrets of bosonic materials, opening doors to unprecedented possibilities in condensed matter physics.

Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have unlocked the secrets of an extraordinary material made of bosons. Traditionally, the scientific community has focused on understanding the behavior of fermions, the subatomic particles responsible for the stability and interaction of matter. However, this recent breakthrough explores the unique properties of bosons, shedding light on a less explored realm of particle physics.

By overlapping lattices of tungsten diselenide and tungsten disulfide in a twisted configuration known as a moiré… More.

Sakkmesterke/iStock.

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Year 2013 Basically they found out water is quantum which could then be turned into a water quantum computer.

Water is vital to life as we know it, but there is still a great deal unknown when it comes to correctly modeling its properties. Now researchers have discovered room-temperature water may be even more bizarre than once suspected — quantum physics suggest its hydrogen atoms can travel surprisingly farther than before thought, report findings detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Water is just made of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom, but despite its apparent simplicity, liquid water displays a remarkable number of unusual properties, such as how it decreases in density upon freezing, and the existence of some 19 different forms of ice. Scientists traditionally ascribe water’s peculiar behavior to the hydrogen bond. Water is polar — partial electric charges separate within the molecule, leading to slightly positively charged hydrogen ends and a negatively charged oxygen middle. As such, the hydrogens in one water molecule can get attracted to the oxygen in another, a hydrogen bond that can help explain why water has such a high boiling point, for example.

All of water’s anomalies, together with its unquestionably vital role in climate and life on Earth, have led to intense research around the globe, but still much remains unknown about it. To shed light on water’s behavior, materials scientist Michele Ceriotti at the University of Oxford in England and his colleagues modeled how the atomic nuclei of water’s hydrogen might behave in a quantum way — that is, not like points as the above explanation of hydrogen bonding from classical physics would suggest, but as more delocalized, cloud-like objects.

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MIT researchers have found a new mechanism by which the superconductor iron selenide transitions into a superconducting state. Unlike other iron-based superconductors, iron selenide’s transition involves a collective shift in atoms’ orbital energy, not atomic spins. This breakthrough opens up new possibilities for discovering unconventional superconductors.

Under certain conditions — usually exceedingly cold ones — some materials shift their structure to unlock new, superconducting behavior. This structural shift is known as a “nematic transition,” and physicists suspect that it offers a new way to drive materials into a superconducting state where electrons can flow entirely friction-free.

But what exactly drives this transition in the first place? The answer could help scientists improve existing superconductors and discover new ones.

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You’re familiar with the states of matter we encounter daily – such as solid, liquid, and gas – but in more exotic and extreme conditions, new states can appear, and scientists from the US and China just found one.

They’re calling it the chiral bose-liquid state, and as with every new arrangement of particles we discover, it can tell us more about the fabric and the mechanisms of the Universe around us – and in particular, at the super-small quantum scale.

States of matter describe how particles can interact with one another, giving rise to structures and various ways of behaving. Lock atoms in place, and you have a solid. Allow them to flow, you have a liquid or gas. Force charged partnerships apart, you have a plasma.

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Most of us don’t think of atoms as having their own unique vibrations, but they do. In fact, it’s a feature so fundamental to nature’s building blocks that a team of University of Washington researchers recently observed and used this phenomenon in their research study. By studying the light atoms emitted when stimulated by a laser, they were able to detect vibrations sometimes referred to as atomic “breathing.”

The result is a breakthrough that may one day allow us to build better tools for many kinds of quantum technologies.

Led by Mo Li, a professor of photonics and nano devices in both the UW Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the UW Physics Department, the researchers set out to build a better quantum emitter, or QE, one that could be incorporated into optical circuits.

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Water and carbon make a quantum couple: the flow of water on a carbon surface is governed by an unusual phenomenon dubbed quantum friction. A new work published in Nature Nanotechnology experimentally demonstrates this phenomenon—which was predicted in a previous theoretical study—at the interface between liquid water and graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms. Advanced ultrafast techniques were used to perform this study. These results could lead to applications in water purification and desalination processes and maybe even to liquid-based computers.

For the last 20 years, scientists have been puzzled by how water behaves near carbon surfaces. It may flow much faster than expected from conventional flow theories or form strange arrangements such as square ice. Now, an international team of researchers from the Max Plank Institute for Polymer Research of Mainz (Germany), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2, Spain), and the University of Manchester (England), reports in the study published in Nature Nanotechnology on June 22, 2023, that water can interact directly with the carbon’s electrons—a quantum phenomenon that is very unusual in .

A liquid, such as water, is made up of that randomly move and constantly collide with each other. A solid, in contrast, is made of neatly arranged atoms that bathe in a cloud of electrons. The solid and the liquid worlds are assumed to interact only through collisions of the liquid molecules with the solid’s atoms—the liquid molecules do not “see” the solid’s electrons. Nevertheless, just over a year ago, a paradigm-shifting theoretical study proposed that at the water-carbon interface, the liquid’s molecules and the solid’s electrons push and pull on each other, slowing down the liquid flow: this new effect was called quantum friction. However, the theoretical proposal lacked experimental verification.

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