Skip to main content

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.


International Research Conference on High Energy Physics and Computational Science

More details: -----------------
Visit Our Website : https://x-i.me/hep
Visit Our Conference Submission : https://x-i.me/hepcon
Visit Our Award Nomination : https://x-i.me/hepnom

Get Connected Here: ==================

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Physicists observe a new form of magnetism for the first time

MIT physicists have demonstrated a new form of magnetism that could one day be harnessed to build faster, denser, and less power-hungry " spintronic " memory chips. The new magnetic state is a mash-up of two main forms of magnetism: the ferromagnetism of everyday fridge magnets and compass needles, and antiferromagnetism, in which materials have magnetic properties at the microscale yet are not macroscopically magnetized. Now, the MIT team has demonstrated a new form of magnetism , termed "p-wave magnetism." Physicists have long observed that electrons of atoms in regular ferromagnets share the same orientation of "spin," like so many tiny compasses pointing in the same direction. This spin alignment generates a magnetic field, which gives a ferromagnet its inherent magnetism. Electrons belonging to magnetic atoms in an antiferromagnet also have spin, although these spins alternate, with electrons orbiting neighboring atoms aligning their spins antiparalle...
Post a Comment
Read more

Green comet to pass Earth, won't be back for another 50,000 years

   visit:  https://hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/ After travelling from the icy reaches of our Solar System it will come closest to the Sun on January 12 and pass nearest to Earth on February 1.   A newly discovered comet could be visible to the naked eye as it shoots past Earth and the Sun in the coming weeks for the first time in 50,000 years, astronomers have said. The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March last year. After travelling from the icy reaches of our Solar System it will come closest to the Sun on January 12 and pass nearest to Earth on February 1. It will be easy to spot with a good pair of binoculars and likely even with the naked eye, provided the sky is not too illuminated by city lights or the Moon. The comet "will be brightest when it is closest to the Earth", Thomas Prince, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology who works at the Zwicky Transi...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Explore the Fourth Dimension"

Fourth Dimension   The fourth dimension is a fascinating concept that has captured the imaginations of scientists, mathematicians, and artists for centuries. Unlike our three-dimensional world, which is limited by the linear flow of time, the fourth dimension is a realm of space and time that exists beyond our everyday experience. One way to visualize the fourth dimension is through the use of a hypercube, also known as a tesseract. A hypercube is a cube within a cube, with additional lines and edges connecting the vertices of the two cubes. It's impossible to construct in our three-dimensional world, but it provides a glimpse into what the fourth dimension might look like. Another way to understand the fourth dimension is through the concept of a wormhole, a theoretical passage through space-time that connects two distant points in the universe. A wormhole is like a shortcut through the fabric of space-time, allowing us to travel vast distances in an instant. While there is no de...
Post a Comment
Read more