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Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have engineered the lightest optical mirror imaginable. The novel metamaterial is made of a single structured layer that consists only of a few hundred identical atoms. The atoms are arranged in the two dimensional array of an optical lattice formed by interfering laser beams. The research results are the first experimental observations of their kind in an only recently emerging new field of subwavelength quantum optics with ordered atoms. So far, the mirror is the only one of its kind. The results are today published in Nature.

Usually, mirrors utilize highly polished metal surfaces or specially coated optical glasses to improve performance in smaller weights. But physicists at MPQ now demonstrated for the very first time that even a single structured layer of a few hundred atoms could already form an optical mirror, making it the lightest one imaginable. The new mirror is only several tens of nanometers thin, which is a thousand times thinner than the width of a human hair. The reflection, however, is so strong it could even be perceived with the pure human eye.

New research shows that one of the heaviest known elements can be manipulated to a greater degree than previously thought, potentially paving the way for new strategies to recycle nuclear fuel and better long-term storage of radioactive elements.

An international team of researchers has demonstrated how curium—element 96 in the periodic table and one of the last that can be seen with the naked eye—responds to the application of high pressure created by squeezing a sample between two diamonds.

Led by Florida State University Professor Thomas Albrecht-Schmitt and collaborators at the University at Buffalo and Aachen University, the team found that the behavior of curium’s outer electrons—which influence its ability to bond with other elements—can be altered by shortening the distance between it and surrounding lighter atoms. The findings are published in the journal Nature.

A new spin on the magnetic compression of plasmas could improve materials science, nuclear fusion research, X-ray generation and laboratory astrophysics, research led by the University of Michigan suggests.

The study shows that a spring-shaped magnetic field reduces the amount of plasma that slips out between the magnetic field lines.

Known as the fourth state of matter, plasma is a gas so hot that electrons rip free of their atoms. Researchers use magnetic compression to study extreme plasma states in which the density is high enough for quantum mechanical effects to become important. Such states occur naturally inside stars and gas giant planets due to compression from gravity.

Cooling rubidium atoms and slowing them down makes them behave like a mirror that could one day be used to explore the quantum world.

Circa 2012

Big science meets applied engineering. CERN, renowned for smashing protons, culling antimatter and the like, has put its accelerating processes to use making and commercializing solar panels.

A dash of virtual reality helps replicate the serendipitous interactions of an in-person conference when participants are scattered across the globe.

MIT engineers develop a hybrid process that connects photonics with “artificial atoms,” to produce the largest quantum chip of its type.

MIT researchers have developed a process to manufacture and integrate “artificial atoms,” created by atomic-scale defects in microscopically thin slices of diamond, with photonic circuitry, producing the largest quantum chip of its type.

The accomplishment “marks a turning point” in the field of scalable quantum processors, says Dirk Englund, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Millions of quantum processors will be needed to build quantum computers, and the new research demonstrates a viable way to scale up processor production, he and his colleagues note.

Berkeley Lab researchers are part of an international team that reports a high-sensitivity measurement by underground CUPID-Mo experiment.

Nuclear physicists affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) played a leading role in analyzing data for a demonstration experiment that has achieved record precision for a specialized detector material.

The CUPID-Mo experiment is among a field of experiments that are using a variety of approaches to detect a theorized particle process, called neutrinoless double-beta decay, that could revise our understanding of ghostly particles called neutrinos, and of their role in the formation of the universe.

Evidence has emerged for long-proposed, but previously unconfirmed quasiparticles called anyons. The concept of anyons goes back 43 years, and physicists have found evidence collections of particles are behaving as anyons for some time, but have lacked confirmation. Now, within months of each other, two teams have found different methods to verify that this is what they are dealing with that look much more conclusive.

The universe’s particles are divided into two sorts; fermions and bosons. Fermions, including the components of atoms, cannot occupy the same quantum state as each other while bosons, which include photons of light, have no such problem.

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