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Vacuum is often thought of as empty, but in fact it is teeming with fleeting energy fluctuations—virtual photons popping in and out of existence that can interact with matter, giving rise to new, potentially useful properties.

Researchers use optical cavities, structures made of mirrors facing one another, to confine these fluctuations, harnessing their effects to engineer new forms of matter.

Conventional boost fluctuations, or vacuum fields, for both right-and left-handed circularly polarized light. Rice University researchers and collaborators have developed a new design that selectively enhances the quantum vacuum fluctuations of circularly polarized light in a single direction, achieving chirality—a feat that typically requires the use of a strong magnetic field.

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Scientists at NPL recently published findings on laser frequency stabilization, demonstrating an unprecedented level of performance using an optical reference cavity. This advancement features a beyond state-of-the-art optical storage time and a novel approach to actively cancel spurious stabilization noise.

Frequency stabilization of lasers to optical reference cavities is a well-established method for achieving superior stability. The recent work, published in Optics Letters, significantly reduces technical stabilization noise, enabling the realization of lasers with enhanced stability performance.

The team developed an optical reference measuring an extraordinary 68 cm in length, achieving a record optical storage time of 300 microseconds. To put this achievement into perspective, the light trapped between the high reflectivity mirrors at either end of the 68 cm cavity can travel approximately 100 kilometers, equivalent to twice the length of the Eurotunnel.

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Researchers used powerful XFELs to trigger strong inner-shell lasing, producing attosecond hard X-ray pulses. Filamentation and Rabi cycling helped explain these effects. Lasers, once confined to the realm of science fiction, are now widely used in research, medicine, and even everyday entertainm

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CU Boulder scientists created a quantum device that uses cold atoms and lasers to track 3D acceleration. In a new study, physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder used a cloud of atoms cooled to extremely low temperatures to measure acceleration in three dimensions at the same time, achiev

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The answer, it turns out, is yes. In a breakthrough experiment, scientists have observed signs of anyons in a one-dimensional ultracold gas for the first time. The research, published in Nature, involved teams from the University of Innsbruck, Université Paris-Saclay, and Université Libre de Bruxelles.

To reveal the presence of anyons, the scientists carefully injected and accelerated a mobile impurity into a tightly controlled gas of bosons at near absolute zero.

Absolute zero is the theoretical lowest temperature on the thermodynamic scale, corresponding to 0.00 K (−273.15 °C or −459.67 °F). At this point, atomic motion ceases entirely, and the substance no longer emits or absorbs thermal energy.

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Researchers have developed a novel analytical model that reveals the kinetics of exciton dynamics in thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials. Organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, are photoluminescence devices that use organic compounds to generate light. Compared to traditio

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Researchers found that natural polymers derived from okra and fenugreek are highly effective at removing microplastics from water. The same sticky substances that make okra slimy and give fenugreek its gel-like texture could help clean our water in a big way. Scientists have discovered that these

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The world’s strangest trampoline doesn’t bounce—it swings sideways and even glides around corners. But no one can jump on it, because it’s less than a millimeter tall. Imagine a trampoline so tiny it’s just 0.2 millimeters wide, with a surface thinner than anything you’ve ever seen, only about 20

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The ingestible capsule creates a drug depot in the stomach, slowly releasing its medication over time and removing the need for patients to take a daily dose. For many people living with schizophrenia, other psychiatric conditions, or chronic illnesses like hypertension and asthma, taking medicat

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Researchers have demonstrated the slowing and subsequent reacceleration of a muon beam, increasing the potential of muon beams as a research tool.

About every second, the average human has a rare messenger from the edge of space passing through their body. Muons―similar to electrons but with 200 times the mass―are created naturally when cosmic ions strike the upper atmosphere, producing a shower of particles. Muons can also be created artificially, but these muon beams are very sparse compared to more conventional electron, proton, and ion beams. Over the past few decades, researchers have developed a way to make much denser beams [1, 2], but the difficulty of working with such beams has kept scientists from fulfilling their potential as a research tool. Now a team at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) has successfully demonstrated the capability to manipulate a dense muon beam, accelerating the muons in a radio-frequency device for the first time [3].

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