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Physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are on the hunt for physics phenomena beyond the standard model. Some theories predict an as-yet undiscovered particle could be found in the form of a new resonance (a narrow peak) similar to the one that heralded the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

However, Nature is not always so kind and new resonances may be so massive that their production requires collision energies beyond that of the LHC. If so, all is not lost. Just as gently sloping terrain may indicate the presence of a mountain peak ahead, LHC data may contain some hints that interesting phenomena are present at higher energy scales.

As scientists await the highly anticipated initial results of the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, collaborating scientists from DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory continue to employ and maintain the unique system that maps the magnetic field in the experiment with unprecedented precision.

Argonne scientists upgraded the measurement system, which uses an advanced communication scheme and new magnetic field probes and electronics to map the field throughout the 45-meter circumference ring in which the experiment takes place.

The experiment, which began in 2017 and continues today, could be of great consequence to the field of particle physics. As a follow-up to a past experiment at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, it has the power to affirm or discount the previous results, which could shed light on the validity of parts of the reigning Standard Model of particle physics.

In 1973, physicist and later Nobel laureate Philip W. Anderson proposed a bizarre state of matter: the quantum spin liquid (QSL). Unlike the everyday liquids we know, the QSL actually has to do with magnetism—and magnetism has to do with spin.

Disordered electron spin produces QSLs

What makes a magnet? It was a long-lasting mystery, but today we finally know that magnetism arises from a peculiar property of sub-atomic particles, like electrons. That property is called “spin,” and the best—yet grossly insufficient—way to think of it is like a child’s spinning-top toy.

Borrowing a page from high-energy physics and astronomy textbooks, a team of physicists and computer scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has successfully adapted and applied a common error-reduction technique to the field of quantum computing.

In the world of subatomic particles and giant particle detectors, and distant galaxies and giant telescopes, scientists have learned to live, and to work, with uncertainty. They are often trying to tease out ultra-rare particle interactions from a massive tangle of other particle interactions and background “noise” that can complicate their hunt, or trying to filter out the effects of atmospheric distortions and interstellar dust to improve the resolution of astronomical imaging.

Also, inherent problems with detectors, such as with their ability to record all particle interactions or to exactly measure particles’ energies, can result in data getting misread by the electronics they are connected to, so scientists need to design complex filters, in the form of computer algorithms, to reduce the margin of error and return the most accurate results.

A team of researchers from China, Spain, Russia and Portugal has developed a way to use Moiré lattices to optically induce and highlight the formation of optical solitons under different geometrical conditions. In their paper published in the journal Nature Photonics, the group describes their work, which involved using photorefractive nonlinear media as a means of localizing laser light into tight spots.

Solitons are quasiparticles propagated by a traveling wave. Unlike waves such as those produced in water, solitons are neither followed nor preceded by other such waves—they also hold their shape as they move. They are important because they are able to prevent diffraction from occurring, which is why they play such an important role in telecommunications and other information carrier systems. Moiré lattices are patterns that sometimes emerge in printed or scanned images when two patterns overlap one another in an offset fashion. They have been used in graphene-based research efforts and work that involves manipulating very cold atoms. They have also been found to play a roll in the development of colloidal clusters.

In this new work, the researchers were investigating the ways that light could be stopped from spreading—more specifically, ways that laser light could be trapped in a tight spot. To that end, they used a laser beam to stencil a special a type of crystal: a photorefractive strontium barium niobite crystal with nonlinear holographic properties. The stencil forced a beam of laser light to form into a twisted Moiré lattice. As the light moved through the lattice, the researchers found that solitons formed. They also found that they could adjust the threshold of the laser power by fine-tuning the angles of the twists in the lattice. Additionally, the formation of solitons in the lattices occurred with smooth transitions, from fully periodic geometries to aperiodic ones. The researchers also noted that such thresholds in their setup were quite low.

Nuclear fusion is the great hope for generating clean power. Scientists in France have started assembling an enormous international fusion reactor known by the acronym ITER. It has already taken ten years and a global scientific effort to get this far. And now the main construction at the huge complex in southern France will begin, with components sent from all over the world. The idea is to create energy not by splitting atoms like nuclear power stations do now, but by fusing them together.

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To better understand how the novel coronavirus behaves and how it can be stopped, scientists have completed a three-dimensional map that reveals the location of every atom in an enzyme molecule critical to SARS-CoV-2 reproduction.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering to identify key information to improve the effectiveness of drug inhibitors designed to block the virus’s replication mechanism. The research is published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, expresses long chains of proteins composed of approximately 1,900 amino acid residues. For the virus to reproduce, those chains have to be broken down and cut into smaller strands by an enzyme called the main protease. The active protease enzyme is formed from two identical protein molecules held together by hydrogen bonds. Developing a drug that inhibits or blocks the protease activity will prevent the virus from replicating and spreading to other cells in the body.

When atoms get extremely close, they develop intriguing interactions that could be harnessed to create new generations of computing and other technologies. These interactions in the realm of quantum physics have proven difficult to study experimentally due the basic limitations of optical microscopes.

Now a team of Princeton researchers, led by Jeff Thompson, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, has developed a new way to control and measure atoms that are so close together no optical lens can distinguish them.

Described in an article published Oct. 30 in the journal Science, their method excites closely-spaced erbium atoms in a crystal using a finely tuned laser in a nanometer-scale optical circuit. The researchers take advantage of the fact that each atom responds to slightly different frequencies, or colors, of laser light, allowing the researchers to resolve and control multiple atoms, without relying on their spatial information.

The result is a science park and university campus that offers degrees at all levels. It hosts more than 300 labs and advanced research equipment, such as the SOLEIL synchrotron. About 100 companies and 6 of France’s public research organizations, including the national research agency CNRS, have a presence there. That combination — of the university with national facilities — is powerful, says Price. The park accounts for an estimated 15% of France’s public and private research. About 30,000 people work or study at Saclay, and this is projected to rise to 80,000 by 2030.

The lab has no overall scientific project, and has added an extra layer of management, says Fayard, although he concedes that the coronavirus pandemic has complicated the lab’s first months. “I fear the lab will have to work hard not to fall between two stools — it is too big to be efficient, but not big enough to invest alone in major local infrastructures.”

But Oliver Brüning, a particle physicist at CERN, Europe’s particle physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, who spent time working at LAL, says he thinks the new lab has greater weight and influence than did LAL alone.

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