Friday, May 31, 2024

In a role reversal, physics may help find solutions to long-standing mathematical problems.

 


If maths is the language the universe was written in, then pi, written as π, is surely one of its favourite characters. Initially discovered as a mathematical constant of the ratio between the circumference and radius of a circle, we soon realised that the number pops up everywhere when we study the properties of the universe and its constituents. From thermodynamics and electromagnetism to biological sciences and creation of our entire digital ecosystem, the humble pi makes its appearance. The number has gained such a cult following that we even have a day to celebrate it - pi day, celebrated on the 14th of March, because of its resemblance to the first 3 digits

Pi is an irrational number, meaning it cannot be written as the ratio of two real numbers and the digits after the decimal continues to infinity. In order to find the digits of pi after the decimal, mathematicians use what is called a series representation - adding infinitely many digits.

However, using even the most modern series representation, calculating the digits of pi can be an arduous task, and involves summing billions of digits. Pi belongs to a class of numbers called transcendental numbers. These are non-algebraic numbers, meaning they cannot be written in the form of an algebraic equation with rational coefficients.

The Euler-Beta function usually illustrated in theoretical physics provides the backbone for explaining phenomena such as high-energy particle collisions. In high-energy experiments, like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN, Switzerland, particles, like protons or electrons, are accelerated to speeds close to the speed of light and then collide. Similar to smashing an object to break it open and reveal its constituents, colliding particles at such high energies allows for the production of virtual particles to be created, thus probing the constituent particles of the Universe. Such experiments can be termed as scattering experiments. Light scattering from objects allows us to see an object. Similarly, particles scattering from high-energy collisions allows us to see the constituents of the particles. The more energy we put into the scattering experiments, higher the resolving power of the experiment, revealing higher- mass virtual particles.



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Thursday, May 23, 2024

The neutrino’s quantum fuzziness is beginning to come into focus

 


             Physicists set a limit on the uncertainty of the subatomic particle's position. cientists used a superconducting sensor chip (shown) to detect the energy of atoms recoiling after they decayed within a layer of tantalum on the sensor. That measurement helped set a limit on a quantum property of neutrinos, which are also emitted in the decay.

Neutrinos are known for funny business. Now scientists have set a new limit on a quantum trait responsible for the subatomic particles’ quirkiness: uncertainty. The lightweight particles morph from one variety of neutrino to another as they travel, a strange phenomenon called neutrino oscillation (SN: 10/6/15). That ability rests on quantum uncertainty, a sort of fuzziness intrinsic to the properties of quantum objects, such as their location or momentum. But despite the importance of quantum uncertainty, the uncertainty in the neutrino’s position has never been directly measured.

“The ‘quantum properties of the neutrino’ stuff is a little bit of the Wild West at the moment,” says nuclear physicist Kyle Leach of Colorado School of Mines in Golden. “We’re still trying to figure it out.” It’s impossible to know everything about a quantum particle. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle famously states that it’s futile to attempt to precisely determine both the momentum of a quantum object and its position (SN: 1/12/22). Now, Leach and colleagues report new details about the size of the neutrino’s wave packet, which indicates the uncertainty in the particle’s position.

Quantum particles travel as waves, with ripples that are related to the probability of finding a particle at a given location. A wave packet is the set of ripples corresponding to a single particle. The new experiment sets a limit on the size of the wave packet for neutrinos produced in a particular type of radioactive decay, Leach’s team reports in a paper submitted April 3 to arXiv.org. The particles have a wave packet size of at least 6.2 trillionths of a meter. The researchers studied neutrinos produced in the decay of beryllium-7, via a process called electron capture. In this process, a beryllium-7 nucleus absorbs an electron, and the atom transforms into lithium-7 and spits out a neutrino. The team implanted beryllium-7 atoms in a highly sensitive device made from five layers of material, including superconducting tantalum, which can transmit electricity without resistance. In the decay, the newly produced lithium-7 recoils away from the neutrino. When cooled to 0.1 degrees above absolute zero (–273.05° Celsius), the device allowed the researchers to detect the energy of that recoil. The spread in the energy of the lithium atoms revealed the neutrino wave packet’s minimum size. Neutrinos are special in that they interact so rarely with matter that they maintain their quantum properties over long distances. Most quantum effects take place on very small scales, but neutrino oscillations occur over thousands of kilometers.


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Friday, May 17, 2024

Hunting for millicharged particles at the LHC

 


The FORMOSA demonstrator (foreground) during installation in the underground cavern of the FASER experiment (background).

The LHC family of experiments continues to grow. Alongside the four main experiments, a new generation of smaller experiments is contributing to the search for particles predicted by theories beyond the Standard Model, our current theory of particle physics. Recently, the FORMOSA demonstrator, which hunts for millicharged particles, has been installed in the cavern containing the FASER detector, 480 meters downstream from the ATLAS interaction point. It will now collect its first data. Some theories predict the existence of millicharged elementary particles that would have a charge much smaller than the electron charge. If they exist, they would give clues to a theory beyond the Standard Model and could be considered as candidates for dark matter. The FORMOSA demonstrator aims to prove the feasibility of the full experiment, which is intended to be installed in a proposed underground hall located about 620 metres away from the ATLAS interaction point. This experimental area – the Forward Physics Facility – is under study within the Physics Beyond Colliders initiative and is expected to host several experiments that will search for long-lived particles predicted by theories beyond the Standard Model. These particles would be produced by collisions at the centre of the ATLAS detector and would interact feebly with Standard Model particles. If approved, the experiments, among them the the proposed FASERν 2 and FLArE experiments, could start taking data when the High-Luminosity LHC is switched on in 2029. The FORMOSA demonstrator comprises scintillators. When interacting with a charged particle, the scintillators emit photons that are subsequently converted into an electrical signal. While cosmic muons or those from ATLAS collisions may also strike the scintillators, millicharged particles typically deposit much less energy into each layer, distinguishing them from muons that traverse the detector. “Initial studies with so-called no-beam data and source tests look already promising. This marks an important step towards achieving the goal to run the demonstrator this year and a great demonstration of the collaborative spirit of the projects within the Forward Physics Facility,” says project leader Matthew Citron from University of California, Davis. Millicharged particles have become a particular focus of research in recent years. The MilliQan detector, located 33 meters away from the CMS interaction point, as well as MoEDAL-MAPP close to LHCb, started data taking during LHC Run 3. In 2020, a study carried out with a smaller demonstrator, MilliQan had ruled out the existence of millicharged particles for a range of masses and charges. Thanks to a higher volume of detection and its location in the far forward region of the LHC collisions, the FORMOSA experiment hopes to extend this search.


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