Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: particle physics – Page 8

Physicists extend the search for quantum black holes at the LHC

Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have extended the search for evidence of microscopic black holes produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The formation of these tiny, fleeting objects at the LHC represents one way theorists have sought to resolve anomalies in our understanding of the basic structure of spacetime, while the method used to look for them demonstrates a new way of searching for new particles.

“Had we found evidence, we could have begun to directly study quantum gravity,” said Tamas Vami, a researcher in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment who is conducting his postdoctoral work under the guidance of UCSB physics professor Joe Incandela. “It’s a step toward unifying all of the known fundamental forces, which has been a goal of physicists for more than a century.”

But a null result does not make for a fruitless search, said Incandela Lab graduate student researcher Danyi Zhang. Quite the opposite.

Stacked 2D materials reveal room-temperature multiferroicity and voltage-controlled magnetism

Multiferroics are materials that simultaneously exhibit two or more ferroic orders—stable arrangements of physical properties that can be switched using an external stimulus. These materials could be highly advantageous for the development of various technologies, including non-volatile, low-power memory devices, spintronic devices, miniaturized electronics, neuromorphic hardware, sensors and magnetoelectric devices.

The key advantage of multiferroics is that their different ferroic orders can be coupled, for instance allowing engineers to alter magnetic behavior using an electric voltage. Despite their promise, synthesizing multiferroics that are stable, ultrathin and controllable at room temperature has so far proved challenging.

Researchers at the University of Maryland and other institutes recently demonstrated an approach for creating van der Waals heterostructures that exhibit multiferroicity at room temperature.

Lost quantum traces could reveal dark matter at the Large Hadron Collider

Particle collisions are inherently quantum, but much of that character is lost when we turn them into classical data. Sarah Alam Malik explores whether preserving more of it could help us spot signs of dark matter and other new physics

Real-time quantum jump in sound observed for first time

A Stanford team has documented the first direct observation of quantum jumps of sound in a mechanical resonator, completing an arc of scientific exploration that started more than 100 years ago.

Quantum jumps—sudden transitions from one energy state to another—have been theorized since the early 1900s. Scientists first demonstrated these jumps in trapped ions in 1986 and later in photons, the fundamental particles of light, in 2007. Observing quantum jumps of sound had remained elusive, but a team led by Stanford physicist Amir Safavi-Naeini has recorded these phenomena, publishing the findings in the journal Science.

“What this study shows will allow us to move forward with developing new quantum technologies with sound,” said Safavi-Naeini, associate professor of applied physics in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. “We have seen that vibrating objects can exhibit quantum behavior, which is the prerequisite for many of the operations needed by quantum computing and sensing.”

What kills Schrödinger’s cat? Underground experiment rules out gravity model for quantum decoherence

Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives rise to thought-experiment oddities like Schrödinger’s famous dead-and-alive cat. The process by which quantum phenomena like superposition—the paradoxical affliction of Schrödinger’s cat—fade into the classical reality we experience is known as decoherence.

Now, a new experiment has narrowed the field of possible explanations for decoherence, in particular ruling out a prominent theory linking gravity to the process. The results appeared in a paper in the New Journal of Physics in June 2026.

“One of the deepest questions in modern physics is why the strange quantum behavior that governs atoms and elementary particles seems to disappear in the macroscopic world we experience every day,” says FQxI member Catalina Curceanu, director of research and spokesperson for the VIP Collaboration at the National Laboratory of Frascati of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN-LNF) in Italy.

Is dark matter ‘natural?’ Physicist puts the question to the test

Dark matter is one of the oldest open problems in physics. It makes up most of the matter in the universe and shapes how galaxies form and move, yet no one has ever directly detected it. Physicists have proposed dozens of candidates to explain it: exotic new particles, black holes formed moments after the Big Bang and more.

With no direct detection to settle the question, researchers often fall back on a different test: not “is this candidate detected,” but “is this candidate natural?”

Naturalness is physics’ version of Occam’s razor. A theory is called natural if it explains the universe we see without requiring its underlying numbers to be delicately, almost implausibly, fine-tuned. A theory that only works if several unrelated quantities happen to cancel out to many decimal places is treated with suspicion, even if it isn’t strictly ruled out.

Bypassing the Speed Limit for Thermally Driven Demagnetization

Contrary to expectations, the magnetization dynamics of a ferromagnet can be accelerated by increasing temperature, laser excitation, or magnetic field—a behavior that holds promise for high-speed spintronics.

The ability to control the spins of electrons has given rise to the field of spintronics, opening the door to faster, more energy-efficient electronics exploiting the spin degree of freedom of electrons rather than their electrical charge. However, controlling spin in real devices is still slower than controlling charge in conventional electronics. In the past 30 years, femtosecond light pulses have emerged as a promising means of rapid control in spin-based electronics. A magnetic material responds to external excitation most strongly when the system nears its phase-transition temperature. Unfortunately, that’s also where the response decelerates drastically—a phenomenon known as critical slowing down [1–3].

New simulations link unusual particle diffusion to yielding in soft jammed matter

Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, emulsions, foams and gels often display complex and unusual behaviors compared with ordinary solids or liquids. From a mechanical point of view, for instance, they can resist deformation like solids, but they can also start to flow like liquids when a sufficiently strong external drive is applied. This transition from solid-like to liquid-like behavior, known as “yielding,” is central to the physics of soft amorphous materials and to many industrial and biological processes.

Some of these systems are also athermal: They are made of particles large enough that thermal motion plays no role in their dynamics. Their microscopic motion is therefore governed mainly by mechanical driving and interactions with neighboring particles, making their behavior even more unusual and intriguing.

A new study published in Communications Physics, establishes a connection between the mechanical yielding of soft athermal matter and a distinctive form of microscopic dynamics: Fickian yet non-Gaussian diffusion (FnGD). This phenomenon, also referred to as Brownian yet non-Gaussian diffusion, was first reported in 2009 and has since been identified in a variety of molecular systems, as well as in thermal and active soft matter, especially for particles moving in heterogeneous environments.

Sliding droplets point to charging mechanism beyond mobile ions

Whether on a windowpane at home or during the industrial cleaning of computer chips: droplets sliding over solid surfaces become electrically charged. Yet the physical mechanism behind this charging remains a subject of debate. This charging is usually attributed to the exchange of charged particles (ions) at the interface between the droplet and the surface.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now investigated two different types of liquids—so-called polar and nonpolar liquids—in both their liquid and frozen states. The researchers discovered that there is apparently at least one additional effect behind droplet charging. The findings are published in the journal Nature Physics.

When droplets glide across surfaces, they usually become positively charged and leave a negatively charged trail on the surface. This process is known as slide electrification. The resulting electric charges influence the movement of droplets on various surfaces. On a windowpane, for example, this contributes to droplets occasionally getting stuck. During the cleaning of computer chips in industrial manufacturing processes, this can even damage sensitive components. Therefore, understanding which fundamental processes contribute to droplet charging is of great interest.

Mobile trap transports 92 antiprotons by road and stores them for over a month in world first

In March 2026, scientists succeeded in transporting antiprotons by road for the first time in a purpose-built trap loaded on a truck. The BASE collaboration, which realized this experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva under the lead of Professor Dr Stefan Ulmer and Dr Christian Smorra from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), now presents its findings and experiences from this pioneering experiment in the journal Nature. Among other things, they report that it was possible to store antiprotons in a mobile transport vessel for more than a month for the first time ever.

Comparing protons—the positively charged components of an atomic nucleus—with antiprotons—their antimatter counterparts—is one of the most promising methods for seeking differences between matter and antimatter. Any identified difference in their mass or magnetic moment could point to the potential origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry that can be observed in the cosmos.

So-called ultra-high-vacuum Penning traps enable high-precision measurements of the protons and antiprotons confined in them. The BASE (Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment) research collaboration designed and now operates a trap of this kind—known as BASE-STEP—at CERN, or more precisely, the “Antimatter Factory” (AMF) there. The AMF is the only facility worldwide where low-energy antiprotons can be produced, stored and studied.

/* */