An experimental setup built at the Technion Faculty of Physics demonstrates the transfer of atoms from one place to another through quantum tunneling between optical tweezers. Led by Prof. Yoav Sagi and doctoral student Yanay Florshaim from the Solid State Institute, the research was published in Science Advances.
A group of scientists from Skoltech, led by Skoltech Vice President for Photonics Pavlos Lagoudakis, a laureate of the Vyzov (Challenge) prize, shared new results of the polariton condensate research. The team demonstrated that under optical excitation a polariton condensate can simultaneously occupy two closely spaced energy levels, which results in the formation of quantized vortex clusters. The outcomes of the study are prominent for optical tweezers, increasing the width of the data transmission channel in optical communication lines, and in other research areas. The paper was published in the Applied Physics Letters journal. It was featured on the cover of the weekly issue.
The new study is based on the previous work on optical vortices — optical beams that have their phase twisted in a spiral around the propagation axis. In 2022, Skoltech researchers, together with their colleagues from the University of Iceland and the University of Southampton, were the first to show how a cluster of quantized vortices with periodically flipping charges is formed in polariton condensates. The authors experimentally observed a cluster of four vortices and detected periodic flips of the signs of their charges with an interval of one fifth of a nanosecond.
“Polaritons are quasi-particles consisting of light and matter. They can form a macroscopic coherent state — Bose-Einstein condensate. This state behaves, roughly speaking, like one particle and is described by a single wave function. But the condensation of polaritons in inorganic microresonators is achieved not at room temperature, but at extremely low ones, therefore, to observe the condensation of polaritons, we place the sample in which they appear in a cryostat, where it is cooled to four degrees Kelvin,” says Kirill Sitnik, the first author of the study, a junior research scientist at the Skoltech Photonics Center’s Laboratory of Hybrid Photonics.
Scientists have discovered a new way of creating superheavy elements by firing supercharged ion beams at dense atoms. The team believes this method could potentially help synthesize the hypothetical “element 120,” which would be heavier than any known element.
For the first time, researchers have observed how bromoform rearranges its atoms in less than a trillionth of a second after it gets hit by an ultraviolet (UV) pulse. The imaging technique captured a long-predicted pathway by which the ozone-layer-damaging molecule transforms its structure upon interaction with light.
The next head of Europe’s CERN physics laboratory said Thursday that he favored moving forward with plans for a giant particle collider far more powerful than the collider that discovered the famous “God particle”
Fermilab is tackling the extreme conditions generated in neutrino experiments to ensure the success of future research.
“Researchers need to overcome three challenges to make a lasting target: radiation damage, high temperatures and stress from thermal expansion,” remarked the press release.
Nanofibers, incredibly thin threads with exceptional strength and flexibility, are being investigated for their ability to better absorb the shock of the proton beam.
“A nanofiber developed by Fermilab engineer Sujit Bidhar is being researched as a potential target material due to its ability to mitigate thermal shock and be more resistant to radiation damage,” highlighted the press release.
Earlier this year, experiments shattered expectations by pushing the limits of what classical computing was believed to be capable of. Not only did the old fashioned binary technology crack a problem considered to be unique to quantum processing, it outperformed it.
Now physicists from the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Quantum Physics in the US have an explanation for the feat which could help better define the boundaries between the two radically different methods of number-crunching.
The problem involves simulating the dynamics of what’s known as a transverse field Ising (TFI) model, which describes the alignment of quantum spin states between particles spread across a space.
Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have used supercomputer simulations to predict electric charge distributions in mesons, essential for understanding the subatomic structure of matter.
Upcoming experiments at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will further validate these predictions, offering new insights into how quarks and gluons interact to form visible matter.
Exploring Meson Charge Distribution
However, for the first time, two dark matter experiments have detected a neutrino fog, a dense cloud of neutrinos. This discovery is reported by researchers from XENON and PandaX — two scientific experiments that aim to detect dark matter, operating independently in Italy and China respectively.
“This is the first measurement of astrophysical neutrinos with a dark matter experiment,” Fei Gao, a scientist involved in the Xenon experiment, said.
Neutrinos are typically detected through coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS), a process in which neutrinos interact with the entire nucleus rather than just a proton or electron.
Scientists claim that experimental studies of Higgs boson interactions face a fundamental challenge.
Scientists believe that interactions between Higgs bosons could unlock insights into new physics. Discovered at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012, the elusive Higgs boson particle has been at the centre stage for exploring new possibilities in particle physics.
Scientists claimed that the production of Higgs boson pairs can occur within the Standard Model itself. It is such a rare process here that it has not been possible to observe it in the data collected so far.