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Category: particle physics – Page 257

How “Smart Rust” Nanoparticles Are Revolutionizing Water Cleanup

Researchers have developed “smart rust,” iron oxide nanoparticles that clean water by attracting pollutants such as oil, nano-and microplastics, glyphosate, and even estrogen hormones.

Pouring flecks of rust into water typically makes it dirtier. However, a groundbreaking development by researchers has led to the creation of “smart rust,” a type of iron oxide nanoparticle that can purify water. This smart rust has the unique ability to attract various pollutants, such as oil, nano-and microplastics, and the herbicide glyphosate, depending on the particles’ coating. What makes it even more efficient is its magnetic nature, which allows easy removal from water using a magnet, taking the pollutants along with it. Recently, the team has optimized these particles to capture estrogen hormones, which can be detrimental to aquatic life.

Presentation and Significance.

Explaining Matter-Antimatter Imbalance with Gravitational Waves

Upcoming gravitational-wave observatories could find evidence of a new type of neutrino, supporting a popular theory for why matter dominates over antimatter.

Many cosmologists look to a model called the seesaw mechanism to explain both the Universe’s preponderance of matter over antimatter and why the three flavors of neutrinos are so light. The seesaw mechanism resolves these big questions by introducing a yet-unobserved particle known as a sterile neutrino, which is far more massive than the known neutrino flavors. In new theoretical work, Graham White of TRIUMF, Canada, and colleagues propose a method to test the model indirectly using gravitational-wave observatories due to come online in the next decade and beyond. Direct observation is impossible for now, as producing sterile neutrinos experimentally would require a particle accelerator many orders of magnitude more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider.

Pairing of electrons in an artificial atom leads to a breakthrough

The state, known as the Machida-Shibata state, involves the pairing of electrons in an artificial atom on the surface of a superconductor.

A team of physicists from Hamburg University has made a breakthrough in the field of quantum physics by observing a rare state of matter that was predicted by Japanese theorists more than half a century ago.

Credits: EzumeImages/iStock.

Machida-Shibata state.

Physicists confirm existence of “demon” particle

A “demon” particle that has been haunting physicists for nearly 70 years has been found in an experiment by American researchers.

It is not a particle in the traditional sense like a proton or electron. It is a “composite” particle made up of a combination of electrons, in a solid.

In 1956, theoretical physicist David Pines predicted that electrons in a solid could do something strange. Electrons have both mass and charge. But Pines asserted that combinations of electrons in a solid could form a composite particle that is massless, has no charge and does not interact with light.

A new ‘spin’ on ergodicity breaking

In a recent Science paper, researchers led by JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye, along with collaborators JILA and NIST Fellow David Nesbitt, scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Harvard University, observed novel ergodicity-breaking in C60, a highly symmetric molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms arranged on the vertices of a “soccer ball” pattern (with 20 hexagon faces and 12 pentagon faces).

Their results revealed ergodicity breaking in the rotations of C60. Remarkably, they found that this ergodicity breaking occurs without symmetry breaking and can even turn on and off as the molecule spins faster and faster. Understanding ergodicity breaking can help scientists design better-optimized materials for energy and heat transfer.

Many everyday systems exhibit “ergodicity” such as heat spreading across a frying pan and smoke filling a room. In other words, matter or energy spreads evenly over time to all system parts as energy conservation allows. On the other hand, understanding how systems can violate (or “break”) ergodicity, such as magnets or superconductors, helps scientists understand and engineer other exotic states of matter.

Research team simulates super diffusion on a quantum computer

Trinity’s quantum physicists in collaboration with IBM Dublin have successfully simulated super diffusion in a system of interacting quantum particles on a quantum computer.

This is the first step in doing highly challenging quantum transport calculations on quantum hardware and, as the hardware improves over time, such work promises to shed new light in condensed matter physics and materials science.

The work is one of the first outputs of the TCD-IBM predoctoral scholarship programwhich was recently established where IBM hires Ph.D. students as employees while being co-supervised at Trinity. The paper was published recently in npj Quantum Information.

Study discovers pairing of electrons in artificial atoms, a quantum state predicted more than 50 years ago

Researchers from the Department of Physics at Universität Hamburg, observed a quantum state that was theoretically predicted more than 50 years ago by Japanese theoreticians but so far eluded detection. By tailoring an artificial atom on the surface of a superconductor, the researchers succeeded in pairing the electrons of the so-called quantum dot, thereby inducing the smallest possible version of a superconductor. The work appears in the journal Nature.

Usually, electrons repel each other due to their negative charge. This phenomenon has a huge impact on many materials properties such as the electrical resistance. The situation changes drastically if the electrons are “glued” together to pairs thereby becoming bosons. Bosonic pairs do not avoid each other like single electrons, but many of them can reside at the very same location or do the very same motion.

One of the most intriguing properties of a material with such electron pairs is superconductivity, the possibility to let an electrical current flow through the material without any . For many years, superconductivity has found many important technological applications, including imaging or highly sensitive detectors for magnetic fields.