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Blog – Page 15

What happens when a quantum physicist is frustrated by the limitations of quantum mechanics when trying to study densely packed atoms? At EPFL, you get a metamaterial, an engineered material that exhibits exotic properties.

That frustrated physicist is Ph.D. student Mathieu Padlewski. In collaboration with Hervé Lissek and Romain Fleury at EPFL’s Laboratory of Wave Engineering, Padlewski has built a novel acoustic system for exploring condensed matter and their macroscopic properties, all the while circumventing the extremely sensitive nature that is inherent to . Moreover, the can be tweaked to study properties that go beyond solid-state physics. The results are published in Physical Review B.

“We’ve essentially built a playground inspired by that can be adjusted to study various systems. Our metamaterial consists of highly tunable active elements, allowing us to synthesize phenomena that extend beyond the realm of nature,” says Padlewski. “Potential applications include manipulating waves and guiding energy for telecommunications, and the setup may one day provide clues for harvesting energy from waves for instance.”

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Interferometers, devices that can modulate aspects of light, play the important role of modulating and switching light signals in fiber-optic communications networks and are frequently used for gas sensing and optical computing.

Now, applied physicists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have invented a new type of interferometer that allows precise control of light’s frequency, intensity and mode in one compact package.

Called a cascaded-mode interferometer, it is a single waveguide on a silicon-on-insulator platform that can create multiple signal paths to control the amplitude and phase of light simultaneously, a process known as optical spectral shaping. By combining mechanisms to manipulate different aspects of light into a single waveguide, the could be used in advanced nanophotonic sensors or on-chip quantum computing.

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When the plasma inside a fusion system starts to misbehave, it needs to be quickly cooled to prevent damage to the device. Researchers at Commonwealth Fusion Systems believe the best bet is a massive gas injection: essentially, a well-timed, rapid blast of cooling gas inside their fusion system, which is known as SPARC.

But how many gas valves does it take to quickly tame a plasma that is hotter than the sun? The team has to strike the perfect balance: with too few valves, some parts of SPARC might overheat. With too many, valuable space inside the vessel would be wasted.

To answer this question, researchers turned to a known as M3D-C1, which is developed and maintained by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). The code was used to model different valve configurations, and the results show that spacing six gas valves around the fusion vessel, with three on the top and three on the bottom, provides optimal protection.

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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe just screamed past the Sun for the 23rd time, once again matching its own records for closest approach and fastest human-made object. Zooming through space at 430,000 mph and skimming just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, the probe is in perfect health and sendi

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Scientists have provided the most detailed account yet of the earliest stages of DNA replication, an essential process for all life to grow and reproduce. For the first time, scientists have directly observed the very moment DNA begins to unravel, a critical molecular event that underpins its rol

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A hidden quantum wave may keep particles moving, even when everything else freezes. Researchers discovered that phasons, a type of low-temperature quasiparticle found in crystal lattices, allow interlayer excitons to move, even at temperatures where motion is expected to stop.

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