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Archive for the ‘particle physics’ category: Page 471

Feb 16, 2018

Researchers create first superatomic 2-D semiconductor

Posted by in categories: materials, particle physics

(Left) Superatomic structure and (right) exfoliated 15-nm-thick flakes of the material Re6Se8Cl2. Credit: Zhong et al. ©2018 American Chemical Society Atoms are the basic building blocks of all matter—at least, that is the conventional picture. In a new study, researchers have fabricated the first superatomic 2-D semiconductor, a material whose basic units aren’t atoms but superatoms—atomic clusters that exhibit some of the properties of one or more individual atoms. The researchers expect that the new material is just the first member of what will become a new family of 2-D semiconductors…

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Feb 16, 2018

A Scientific Search For A Ghost (Particle)

Posted by in category: particle physics

Scientists put a lot of effort into uncovering the history of these tiny bits of matter, in the hopes that it will tell us something about the universe, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.

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Feb 15, 2018

New form of light: Newly observed optical state could enable quantum computing with photons

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics, weapons

Try a quick experiment: Take two flashlights into a dark room and shine them so that their light beams cross. Notice anything peculiar? The rather anticlimactic answer is, probably not. That’s because the individual photons that make up light do not interact. Instead, they simply pass each other by, like indifferent spirits in the night.

But what if could be made to interact, attracting and repelling each other like atoms in ordinary matter? One tantalizing, albeit sci-fi possibility: sabers — beams of light that can pull and push on each other, making for dazzling, epic confrontations. Or, in a more likely scenario, two beams of light could meet and merge into one single, luminous stream.

It may seem like such optical behavior would require bending the rules of physics, but in fact, scientists at MIT, Harvard University, and elsewhere have now demonstrated that photons can indeed be made to interact — an accomplishment that could open a path toward using photons in quantum computing, if not in lightsabers.

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Feb 14, 2018

Quantum computers ‘one step closer’

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics

Quantum computing has taken a step forward with the development of a programmable quantum processor made with silicon.

The team used microwave energy to align two electron particles suspended in silicon, then used them to perform a set of test calculations.

By using silicon, the scientists hope that quantum computers will be more easy to control and manufacture.

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Feb 14, 2018

Super Sensitive Sensor Sees What You Can’t

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics

Engineers at Dartmouth College have developed a computer chip that can detect a single particle of light. Cameras with the chip would have visual abilities even a superhero would envy.

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Feb 13, 2018

Picture of Single Trapped Atom Wins UK Science Photography Prize

Posted by in categories: engineering, particle physics, science

Zoom in close on the center of the picture above, and you can spot something you perhaps never thought you’d be able to see: a single atom. Here is a close-up if, you’re having trouble:

This strontium atom is emitting light after being excited by a laser, and it’s the winner of the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) photography award. The EPSRC announced the winners of its fifth annual contest yesterday. Winning photographer David Nadlinger, graduate student at the University of Oxford, was just excited to be able to show off his research.

“It’s exciting to find a picture that resonates with other people that shows what I spend my days and nights working on,” Nadlinger told me. The best part, to him, was “the opportunity to excite people about my research, more than winning a competition.”

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Feb 12, 2018

First high-precision measurement of the mass of the W boson at the LHC

Posted by in category: particle physics

Display of a candidate event for a W boson decaying into one muon and one neutrino from proton-proton collisions recorded by ATLAS with LHC stable beams at a collision energy of 7 TeV. (Image: CERN In a paper published today in the European Physical Journal C, the ATLAS Collaboration reports the first high-precision measurement at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the mass of the W boson. This is one of two elementary particles that mediate the weak interaction – one of the forces that govern the behaviour of matter in our universe. The reported result gives a value of 80370±19 MeV for th…

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Feb 12, 2018

Light controls two-atom quantum computation

Posted by in categories: mathematics, particle physics, quantum physics

Scientists have demonstrated mathematical operations with a quantum gate between two trapped atoms that is mediated by photons.

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Feb 11, 2018

Peek inside a gilded cage of liquid argon made to spot neutrinos

Posted by in category: particle physics

This huge shiny cube is just a 1/20th scale model of the planned DUNE neutrino detector. It will be filled with liquid argon to catch these elusive particles.

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Feb 11, 2018

Particle interactions on Titan support the search for new physics discoveries

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics, supercomputing

Nuclear physicists are using the nation’s most powerful supercomputer, Titan, at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to study particle interactions important to energy production in the sun and stars and to propel the search for new physics discoveries.

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