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Category: particle physics – Page 2

MIT Study Reveals Why a Neutrino Laser May Be Impossible

Physicists proposed a way to focus ghostly neutrinos into a laser-like beam, but new MIT calculations show that violent atomic recoil and the particles’ own quantum nature prevent the effect from taking hold.

Trillions of subatomic particles stream through every square inch of Earth, passing through solid rock, massive stars, and human bodies every second without leaving a trace. These particles, known as neutrinos, carry near-zero mass and interact so weakly with normal matter that physicists have struggled to detect them, much less control them into a focused beam, since their discovery in 1956.

Last year, MIT physics professor Joe Formaggio and Ben Jones, then an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and now at the University of Manchester, proposed a theoretical way around that physical barrier.

This Strange New Magnetism Could Change How Computers Work

An unusual magnetic state detected in a layered material could offer a new route to ultrafast memory and energy-efficient electronics.

Inside a crowded electronic circuit, stray magnetic fields can interfere with nearby components. Researchers developing faster, more efficient computers want to use electron spin, a quantum property, to carry information alongside electrical charge. That requires materials that can handle spin without creating unwanted magnetic interference.

University of Central Florida physicist Madhab Neupane and his collaborators have found a promising candidate in Co₁/₄TaSe₂, a layered material containing magnetic cobalt atoms. Their experiments detected signatures of altermagnetism, a form of magnetism that combines useful properties of ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism.

IceCube is built on decades of research into tiny ‘ghost particles’ — but it was the first to find neutrinos coming from deep space

IceCube looks for high energy neutrinos from space. It joins the ranks of complementary experiments that study neutrinos originating closer to home.

First Nuclear Clocks Kick Off a Precision Race

Clocks have always been about more than keeping time. In the 18th century, marine chronometers helped solve the “longitude problem,” enabling sailors to determine their ships’ east–west position at sea [1]. A new generation of ultraprecise clocks may now help researchers navigate uncharted territory beyond the standard model of particle physics. Building on decades of development, two independent teams—one led by Thorsten Schumm of the Vienna University of Technology and Ekkehard Peik of PTB, the German National Metrology Institute [2] and the other by Shiqian Ding of Tsinghua University in China [3]—have reported in Nature the first operating nuclear clocks. Their ticks are set by a transition in the atomic nucleus rather than by transitions of the electrons surrounding it.

Peik says he was “absolutely delighted” by the rapid progress and surprised by the clock’s robustness. Ding says he felt humbled to see decades of work come together in an operating clock. “Two years earlier, that still felt almost too ambitious to imagine,” he says.

These clocks don’t yet match the stability of today’s best atomic clocks, but they hold promise for both practical applications and tests of fundamental physics. Nuclear clocks could eventually become compact and robust, doing away with the ultrahigh-vacuum chambers and elaborate laser-cooling and trapping systems required by today’s most precise atomic clocks.

Hybrid Quantum Computer Could Simulate Both Fermions and Bosons

Pairing superconducting qubits with microwave cavities could reduce the hardware requirements for quantum simulations of fundamental physics.

Performing simulations of quantum systems on an ordinary computer is fundamentally difficult. The resources required to track the state of a quantum system grow exponentially with the size of the system. Therefore, even modest-sized simulations can exceed the capacity of the largest supercomputers. In 1982, Richard Feynman proposed using a controllable quantum system as the computer, so that the quantum mechanics of the machine itself performs the computation [1]. This proposal has grown into a worldwide effort to build quantum computers made up of large numbers of quantum bits, or qubits. But simulating fundamental physics poses a special challenge, as the two classes of particles—fermions and bosons—map to qubits in distinctly different ways.

Quantum computing shortcut makes particle collisions easier to simulate

Collisions between particles at high energies can sometimes produce new particles and shed light on interactions between the fundamental constituents of matter. Simulating these collisions and their underlying processes could yield valuable insights into how matter behaves at extremely small scales.

Quantum computers, devices that process information using the laws of quantum mechanics, could be promising new platforms for the simulation of particle collisions. However, reliably using these devices to simulate the processes following a collision has so far proved challenging.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Washington recently developed a new method that allows quantum computers to prepare the initial wavepackets (localized disturbances linked to moving particles) for particle-collision simulations more efficiently.

Nobel physics winner’s pride at pioneering AI role

Francis Halzen, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, spoke with pride on Wednesday about his early promotion of artificial intelligence in his research on neutrinos.

Halzen, 82, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was visiting the city of Turin in northern Italy and spoke to reporters there a day after the Nobel announcement.

The U.S.–Belgian physicist is the mind behind the IceCube neutrino observatory, made up of 5,484 optical modules used as sensors deep in the Antarctic ice.

Nobel Prize: Neutrinos from Far, Far Away

Neutrino astronomy and the effort to build a cubic-kilometer-sized detector at the South Pole are recognized by the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics.

This story will be updated with a longer explanation of the Nobel-winning work on Thursday, 8 October.

When it comes to messengers from space, neutrinos seem meager: Interacting only through the weak nuclear force, they barely register in Earthly detectors. But unlike cosmic rays and photons, neutrinos are neither deflected nor attenuated during their journeys and thus can deliver information that other astronomical messengers cannot. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes the potential of neutrino astronomy and the assiduous efforts of Francis Halzen to bring it to fruition. Halzen, a particle physicist from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, was the leading force behind the IceCube Neutrino Observatory—a cubic-kilometer-sized detector operating in Antarctic ice since 2010. Shortly after its construction, Halzen and his colleagues reported the first evidence of neutrinos originating from cosmic sources [1, 2]. Further study of these astrophysical neutrinos may provide information about the powerful events that produce high-energy cosmic rays.

Heavy fermions emerge at an atomic-layer interface, unlocking new ways to design quantum materials

A research team led by the University of Osaka has directly observed, for the first time, an unusual heavy-fermion state forming at the boundary between a one-atom-thick material and a metal. Such states are closely linked to exotic quantum phenomena, including unconventional superconductivity, and the finding opens new possibilities for designing quantum materials through their interfaces.

The researchers created a high-quality, one-atom-thick layer of ytterbium–copper (YbCu₂) on a copper crystal and examined how electrons behaved across the interface using intense synchrotron light. Their measurements showed that electrons localized in the atomic layer interact with mobile electrons in the underlying copper to form the heavy-fermion state.

The measurements revealed two distinct heavy-fermion states. One was confined mainly to the two-dimensional YbCu₂ layer, while the other extended into the three-dimensional copper substrate. Crucially, the latter arose from hybridization between localized Yb 4f electrons in the atomic layer and mobile conduction electrons in the underlying copper, providing direct evidence of an interfacial heavy-fermion state.

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