Saturday, November 30, 2024

Cosmic Rays vs. Primordial Photons: A Quick Dive #sciencefather #High En...

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Next-Gen Quantum Computing: The Fusion of Atoms and Photonic Innovation



Researchers at the University of Chicago have developed a new method for enhancing quantum information systems by integrating trapped atom arrays with photonic devices.

This innovation allows for scalable quantum computing and networking by overcoming previous technological incompatibilities. The design features a semi-open chip that minimizes interference and enhances atom connectivity, promising significant advances in computational speed and interconnectivity for larger quantum systems.

Merging Technologies for Enhanced Quantum Computing

Quantum information systems promise faster, more powerful computing capabilities than traditional computers, offering potential solutions to some of the world’s most complex challenges. However, achieving this potential requires building larger, more interconnected quantum computers something scientists have yet to fully realize. Scaling these systems to larger sizes and linking multiple quantum systems together remains a significant challenge.

Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have made a breakthrough by combining two advanced technologies: trapped atom arrays and photonic devices. This innovative approach enables the creation of scalable quantum systems by using photonics to interconnect individual atom arrays, paving the way for advancements in quantum computing, simulation, and networking.

“We have merged two technologies which, in the past, have really not had much to do with each other,” said Hannes Bernien, Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering and senior author of the new work, published in Nature Communications. “It is not only fundamentally interesting to see how we can scale quantum systems in this way, but it also has a lot of practical applications.”



Challenges of Integrating Photonics With Atom Arrays

Arrays of neutral atoms trapped in optical tweezers highly focused laser beams that can hold the atoms in place are an increasingly popular way of building quantum processors. These grids of neutral atoms, when excited in a specific sequence, enable complex quantum computation that can be scaled up to thousands of qubits. However, their quantum states are fragile and can be easily disrupted including by photonic devices that aim to collect their data in the form of photons.

“Connecting atom arrays to photonic devices had been quite challenging because of the fundamental differences in the technologies. Atom array technology relies on lasers for their generation and computation.” said Shankar Menon, a PME graduate student and co-first author of the new work. “As soon as you expose the system to a semiconductor or a photonic chip, the lasers get scattered, causing problems with the trapping of atoms, their detection, and the computation.”

New Semi-Open Chip Design for Quantum Computing

In the new work, Bernien’s group developed a new semi-open chip geometry allowing atom arrays to interface with photonic chips, overcoming these challenges. With the new platform, quantum computations can be carried out in a computation region, and then a small portion of those atoms containing desired data are moved to a new interconnect region for the photonic chip integration.

“We have two separate regions that the atoms can move between, one away from the photonic chip for computation and another near the photonic chip for interconnecting multiple atom arrays,” explained co-first author Noah Glachman, a PME graduate student. “The way this chip is designed, it has minimal interaction with the computational region of the atom array.”

Enhanced Connectivity and Speed With Nanophotonic Cavities

In the interconnect region, the qubit interacts with a microscopic photonic device, which can extract a photon. Then, the photon can be transmitted to other systems through optical fibers. Ultimately, that means that many atom arrays could be interconnected to form a larger quantum computing platform than is possible with a single array.

An additional strength of the new system which could lead to especially speedy computation abilities is that many nanophotonic cavities can be simultaneously connected to one single atom array.

“We can have hundreds of these cavities at once, and they can all be transmitting quantum information at the same time,” said Menon. “This leads to a massive increase in the speed with which information can be shared between interconnected modules.”

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing

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Friday, November 29, 2024

Einstein wins again: Exotic gravity theories take a blow from new observations




Astronomers still struggle to understand phenomena that contradict our current understanding of gravity and the distribution of matter in the Universe.

The most popular explanation for these observations is dark matter but since it has not been directly observed, some scientists favor alternative explanations, including the possibility that our widely accepted laws of physics are wrong or incomplete.

Recent observations from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument provided a perfect testbed to make progress in solving the puzzle.

Modern astronomy has an unsavory secret: 

Astronomers don’t understand how the Universe works. Galaxies spin faster than can be explained by the observed matter and well-established laws of physics. Individual galaxies within vast clusters of galaxies move so fast that those clusters shouldn’t exist. And when researchers look at very distant galaxies, they are distorted as space acts like a giant lens. This distortion is more than Einstein’s theory of relativity can explain.

Scientists have proposed a number of different explanations for these observations. The most popular is that the Universe is dominated by an invisible form of matter, called dark matter, that adds to the gravitational pull that governs the cosmos. But dark matter has never been directly observed  and because it has proven elusive, some scientists favor a different explanation.

If what we observe cannot be explained by the known laws of physics, perhaps the known laws of physics are wrong or at least incomplete. Maybe the accepted theory of gravity needs to be revised. Or perhaps what describes the behavior of matter in the Solar System doesn’t work when applied to the entire cosmos. Understanding what is going on is one of the most urgent goals of astronomy and a recent announcement by a consortium of researchers has weighed in on the problem.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) uses the Mayall telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to survey the Universe. DESI can simultaneously image thousands of distant galaxies. Using 5,000 positioning devices, the device can measure the spectrum of light from each galaxy across wavelengths from 380 to 980 nanometers. This range includes ultraviolet light, the entire visible spectrum, and some infrared.

DESI began operations in 2021 and they have announced the results of the analysis of the first year of recorded data. They have studied nearly 5 million galaxies, at distances ranging from our cosmic neighborhood to those located so far away that the light observed by DESI was emitted 11 billion years ago. The DESI instrument has allowed astronomers to create an unprecedented 3D map of the Universe representing 20% of the entire sky.

Astronomers have long known that the galaxies of the cosmos are not located smoothly throughout space. At length scales of roughly hundreds of millions of light-years, galaxies are clumped together on gigantic sheets surrounding enormous voids, which contain very few galaxies. In many respects, the distribution of galaxies resembles the foam on the top of a quickly drawn pint of beer, with the galaxies located on the surfaces of the bubbles. The size of the voids  the size of the bubbles in the beer analogy  is related to the speed of sound in the early Universe. Like in air, sound in the early Universe consisted of regions of higher and lower density. The regions of higher density created regions of higher gravity, which pulled the matter in that direction. Meanwhile, lower-density regions lost the gravitational tug of war, resulting in the foamy cosmic structure we see today.

The recent announcement by the DESI collaboration investigated the size of the bubbles at different distances from Earth. Because the speed of light is finite, this is equivalent to looking back in time  when the Universe was only 20% of its current age.

By studying the size of the bubbles as a function of time, scientists were able to test Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is the currently accepted theory of gravity. This provided a perfect testbed to see whether Einstein was right  or if, on cosmic scales, his theory just doesn’t work. If the latter is true, scientists would have to invent an improved theory of gravity. However, the DESI measurements were in good agreement with relativity. While this measurement doesn’t rule out all possible extended theories of gravity, it certainly rules out some and it will cause astronomers to revisit their proposed extensions to Einstein’s theory.

This recent result uses only one year of DESI data and reflects a more sophisticated analysis than an announcement last April using the same data. However, there is far more data to be analyzed. DESI is currently in the fourth year of a planned five-year observational program.

The researchers are analyzing the data from the first three years of data, which they hope to announce in the Spring of 2025. The recent announcement agrees with the results of April 2024, which hinted that the energy field that is driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe might be changing over time. If this result is born out by analysis of the larger data set, it will significantly change our understanding of the nature of the cosmos.

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing



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Weinberg's Theories: Time-Reversal Violation Explained! #sciencefather #...

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Thursday, November 28, 2024

"Quantum Radio Astronomy: The Future of Data Encodings!"#sciencefather #...

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Magnetic Octupoles Revolutionize High-Speed, Energy-Saving Memory




Researchers reveal a way to use antiferromagnets to create data-storage devices without moving parts.

Scientists have transformed memory device technology by utilizing antiferromagnetic materials and magnetic octupoles, achieving high speeds and low power consumption, paving the way for smaller, more efficient devices.

Advanced Magnetic Memory

Physicists at RIKEN have shown a groundbreaking method to create ultrafast, energy-efficient memory devices by replacing traditional magnetic materials with innovative alternatives.

In standard hard disk drives, data is accessed by physically moving the magnetic disk. This mechanical movement not only slows down the process but also makes the system prone to wear and failure.





Advantages of Domain-Wall Devices

A more efficient solution involves using electrical currents to shift the boundaries between magnetic domains tiny regions in a material where magnetic moments are consistently aligned. These “domain-wall devices” hold great potential for enabling faster, low-power memory systems without the need for mechanical parts.

“In the case of a hard disk drive, you have a small coil which has to be physically moved around,” explains Yoshichika Otani of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science. “But for devices based on domain walls, you don’t need any mechanical movement. Rather, the domain wall moves, and you can read and write information electrically without any mechanical motion.”

Challenges With Ferromagnetic Domains

Domain-wall devices have been investigated using ferromagnetic domains in which all the spins in a domain are parallel with each other. But these require high current densities to push the domain walls around, which results in high power consumptions. The domains also generate stray magnetic fields, which makes it challenging to cram a lot of them into a small space, making miniaturization difficult.

Antiferromagnetic domains in which the spins are arranged in alternating directions could overcome both these problems. But their low net magnetic fields are a double-edged sword they are beneficial for miniaturization, but they make it difficult to manipulate and detect the domains.

Breakthrough in Antiferromagnetic Materials

Now, Otani and his co-workers have demonstrated a new approach for realizing domain-wall devices based on antiferromagnetic materials that overcomes this difficulty.

The secret to their approach was to use noncollinear antiferromagnets in which sublattice moments form cluster magnetic octupoles. This contrasts with the much more commonly used magnetic dipoles, which have two poles and resemble tiny bar magnets.

Using this structure, the team was able to accelerate domain walls to speeds of 750 meters per second using about a hundredth of the current density needed to move ferromagnet domain walls.

The findings came as a nice surprise to the team. “We weren’t confident that it would work with octupoles,” says Otani. “But it actually worked when we tried it, and so we were pleasantly surprised.”

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing



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Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Kinematic Analysis of Quantum-Entangled Two-Photon Systems #sciencefathe...

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The Coldest Place in the Universe Is Unlocking Antimatter Mysteries



In a chilling Italian lab, scientists utilize extreme cold and ancient materials to challenge existing physics laws.

Their research, aiming to detect phenomena like neutrino less double beta decay, could redefine understanding of matter and antimatter in the universe, involving students in groundbreaking experiments.

Exploring the Universe’s Mysteries: The Italian Lab

In a subterranean laboratory nestled beneath the Apennine Mountains in Italy, where the coldest temperatures in the known universe have been achieved, teams of international scientists are working to unravel one of particle physics’ greatest mysteries.

Among the more than 150 leading researchers contributing to this groundbreaking work is Cal Poly physics professor Thomas Gutierrez. As the principal investigator of a $340,000, three-year grant funded by the National Science Foundation, Gutierrez plays a key role in the project.

The Quest for Forbidden Nuclear Decay

The research takes place at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, located near Assergi, Italy, roughly 80 miles northeast of Rome. This cutting-edge facility draws scientists from prestigious institutions, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, Yale, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Cal Poly, and prominent universities across Europe and Asia.

The NSF funding covers costs associated with Cal Poly travel and experiments involving students. With other scientists, Gutierrez and his Cal Poly student team are exploring unproven theories related to nuclear decay, also known as radioactive decay, the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy through radiation. Their work strives to help better explain why the universe is full of matter, and to address other mysteries that have befuddled scientists for generations.

Unlocking the Secrets of Neutrinos

“If you can find something that breaks the laws of physics, then that’s discovery,” Gutierrez said. “We’re currently looking for is a type of nuclear decay that is currently forbidden by the laws of physics. It’s not supposed to happen. So, if it does, which is what we’re looking for, it tells you a lot about the way the world works.”

The research continues scientific collaboration started under the international CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) program, which now is called CUPID (CUORE Upgrade with Particle Identification). The word “cuore” means heart in Italian; thus the acronym using “cupid” for the subsequent, latest stage of the program.

Gutierrez’s field of study focuses on neutrinos, which are tiny particles with very slight amounts of mass. Abundant in the universe at the Big Bang and traveling at near lightspeeds, neutrinos can also come from violent bursts like exploding stars. Neutrinos are often created by radioactive decay. Because they don’t interact very much and are neutral, they can help explain the enigmas of the universe related to matter and antimatter.

Challenging Matter-Antimatter Symmetry

In modern physics, all particles have antiparticles, their own antimatter counterpart: electrons have antielectrons (positrons), quarks have antiquarks, and neutrons and protons (which make up the nuclei of atoms) have antineutrons and antiprotons.

“Under the laws of physics, there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter, and they should have all annihilated, gone away, and we shouldn’t exist,” Gutierrez said. “Yet this little sliver of matter that got left over is us. Why do we even exist? Why is that sliver there at all? So that’s kind of a puzzle.”

Under a longstanding scientific theory, neutrinos  which are neutral in charge may be their own antiparticles. But this concept has never been proven. The CUPID work hopes to reveal the possibility of neutrinoless double-beta decay, a radioactive process in which an atomic nucleus releases two electrons but no neutrinos. Observing this decay would support the hypothesis that neutrinos are their own antiparticles.

“If neutrinoless double beta decay happens, it tells us all this information about the foundations of how matter, not just this matter, but all matter exists,” Gutierrez said. “This is very powerful.”

Innovations in Particle Detection Technology

Gutierrez and the international science team are collaborating on a study of tellurium dioxide crystals, a mixture of the element tellurium and oxygen.

“There is a hypothesis that a tellurium isotope can undergo a neutrinoless double beta decay,” Gutierrez said.

About a third of the tellurium nuclei in this chunk of crystal is the right isotope, Gutierrez said.

“The idea is to use a detector out of this crystal where it measures its own decay,” Gutierrez said. “It will deposit a very certain amount of energy, raising the temperature, which we can observe. Through this testing, in a best-case scenario, what we’d like to be able to say is whether or not the neutrino is its own antiparticle.”

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing

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Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Exploring Opto Acoustic Nonlinear Frequency #sciencefather #Highenergyph...

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Is Time Just an Illusion Created by Quantum Physics? Find Out!




A recent study introduces a captivating notion: what if time isn’t a fundamental dimension of the universe, but rather an illusion born from quantum physics? This idea could pave new ways to understand physics. Quantum entanglement, which mysteriously connects two particles, might hold the key to comprehending how we perceive time.

The Time Conundrum in Physics

Time is a topic that has long intrigued physicists. The two dominant theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, seem to clash in their descriptions of time. In quantum mechanics, which deals with particle behavior at microscopic scales, time is often seen as a fixed element that flows linearly from past to present. However, it is not inherently connected to the particles themselves. Instead, it is measured by external events, such as the movement of clock hands.

General relativity, developed by Einstein, paints a drastically different picture. Here, time is a fundamental dimension, deeply linked to space itself. This link means that time can be warped by phenomena like gravity or speed. For example, time moves differently for an astronaut traveling at high speeds in space compared to someone on Earth.

This divergence between quantum mechanics and general relativity has led to a deadlock in the quest for a “theory of everything” that would unify these concepts. To break this deadlock, a team led by Alessandro Coppo, a physicist from Italy’s National Research Council, turned to a concept developed in the 1980s: the Page and Wootters mechanism.

This intriguing theory proposes a radical new view of time: instead of viewing it as a fixed and fundamental dimension of our universe, it suggests that time could emerge from interactions among quantum particles. In other words, time could be a product of entangled quantum systems rather than an independent entity.

A Consequence of Quantum Entanglement

To delve into this concept, researchers studied two entangled quantum states. They utilized a harmonic oscillator, which can be thought of as a vibrating spring, and a group of tiny magnets acting as a sort of clock.

Their findings revealed that this system could be described by Schrödinger’s equation, which is vital in quantum mechanics for predicting particle behavior. However, instead of using time as a variable in the equation, the flow of time was determined by the state of the tiny magnets. This suggests that time could depend on quantum relationships between these particles, indicating that even in large-scale systems, time might still emerge from quantum entanglement.

Some scientists, like Vlatko Vedral from the University of Oxford, remain cautious. Although this approach is mathematically appealing, it hasn’t yet led to results that could be tested in concrete experiments. The challenge is to translate this theory into an experimental framework that would allow us to explore these concepts more deeply and to validate or refute these ideas.

Exploring these concepts could potentially revolutionize our understanding of time and the cosmos. Rather than viewing time as something external and inherent to the universe, it might be more relevant to examine it through our daily experiences, which could offer new insights into the nature of time and reality itself.

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing
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Monday, November 25, 2024

Understanding Atomic Scattering Lengths #sciencefather #High energy phys...

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Is light a particle or a wave?




An abstract illustration of shining light. Whether light is a particle or a wave was a question that has vexed scientists for centuries.

From the most distant stars in the sky to the screen in front of your face, light is everywhere. But the exact nature of light, and how it travels, has long puzzled scientists. One question in particular has vexed thinkers from Issac Newton to Albert Einstein: Is light a particle or a wave?

"Whether light is a particle or a wave is a very old question," Riccardo Sapienza, a physicist at Imperial College London, told Live Science. As a species, we seem driven to understand the fundamental nature of the world around us, and this particular puzzle kept 19th-century scientists busy.

Today, there's no doubt about the answer: Light is both a particle and a wave. But how did scientists reach this mind-bending conclusion?

The starting point was to scientifically distinguish between waves and particles. "You would describe an object as a particle if you can identify it as a point in space," Sapienza said. "A wave is an object that you don't define as a point in space and you need to give a frequency of oscillation and distance between maximum and minimum."

The first conclusive evidence of the wave nature of light came in 1801, when Thomas Young performed his now-famous double-slit experiment. He placed a screen with two holes in front of a light source and observed the behavior of the light after it had passed through the slits. The light hitting the wall showed a complicated pattern of bright and dark bands, known as interference fringes.

As the light waves passed through each hole, they generated partial waves that radiated spherically, intercepting each other and adding or subtracting to the final intensity.

"If the light was a particle, you would have ended up with two bunches on the other side of the screen," Sapienza said. "But we have interference, and we see light everywhere after the screen, not just at the position of the holes. That's proof that light is indeed a wave."

Eighty-six years later, Heinrich Hertz became the first to demonstrate the particle nature of light. He noticed that when ultraviolet light shone on a metal surface, it generated a charge a phenomenon called the photoelectric effect. However, the significance of his observation wasn't fully understood until many years later.

What is speed of Light?

Atoms contain electrons in fixed energy levels. Shining light on them is therefore expected to give the electrons energy and enable them to escape from the atom, with brighter light liberating electrons faster. But in experiments following Hertz's work, several unusual observations seemed to completely contradict this classical understanding of physics.

It was Einstein who finally solved this puzzle, for which he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1921. Rather than absorbing light continuously from a wave, atoms actually receive energy in packets of light called photons, explaining odd observations such as the existence of a cutoff frequency.

But what determines whether light behaves as a wave or as a particle? According to Sapienza, this isn't the right question to be asking. "Light is not sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave," he said. "It is always both a wave and a particle. It's just that we highlight one of the properties depending on which experiment we do."

In day-to-day life, we mostly experience light as a wave, and it's this form that physicists find most useful to manipulate.

"There's a full field called metamaterials  by shaping a material with the same features as light, we can enhance the interaction of light with the material and control the waves,” Sapienza said. "For example, we can make solar absorbers that can absorb light more efficiently for energy generation or metamaterial MRI probes which are much more effective."

However, light's double nature, known as wave particle duality, is absolutely fundamental to the existence of the world as we know it. This strange twinned behavior also extends to other quantum particles, like electrons.

"You could not have an atom be stable if you didn't have quantum mechanics with the electrons in specific states," Sapienza said. "If you remove the fact that it is a particle, you remove the fact that it has a specific energy and life could not exist."

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing
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Saturday, November 23, 2024

Revolutionizing CFD: Novel Spectral Methods! #sciencefather #Highenergyp...

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Unlocking the Nano Universe: A Quantum Leap in Magnetic Imaging




Researchers from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle have developed a groundbreaking method to analyze magnetic nanostructures with exceptional precision.

This technique achieves a resolution of approximately 70 nanometers, far surpassing the 500-nanometer limit of conventional light microscopes. The advancement holds significant potential for developing new energy-efficient storage technologies based on spin electronics. The team’s findings are detailed in the latest issue of ACS Nano.

Breakthrough in Nanoscale Imaging

Conventional optical microscopes are limited by the wavelength of light, making it impossible to resolve details smaller than approximately 500 nanometers. A new method has overcome this barrier by harnessing the anomalous Nernst effect (ANE) and a metallic nanoscale tip. ANE generates an electrical voltage in a magnetic metal that is perpendicular to both its magnetization and a temperature gradient.

“A laser beam focuses on the tip of a force microscope and thus causes a temperature gradient on the surface of the sample that is spatially limited to the nanoscale,” explains Professor Georg Woltersdorf from the Institute of Physics at MLU. “The metallic tip acts like an antenna and focuses the electromagnetic field in a tiny area below its apex.”

This innovative approach allows ANE-based imaging with far higher resolution than conventional light microscopy. The team’s published images achieve an impressive resolution of around 70 nanometers.



Advancing Magnetic Structure Analysis

Earlier studies primarily focused on magnetic polarization within the sample plane. However, the research team demonstrated that the in-plane temperature gradient is also critical, enabling the investigation of out-of-plane polarization through ANE measurements. To validate the reliability of this method for visualizing magnetic structures at the nanometer scale, the researchers applied it to a magnetic vortex structure.

Enhancing Spintronic Imaging and Applications

A particular advantage of the new technique is that it also works with chiral antiferromagnetic materials.

“Our findings are significant for the thermoelectric imaging of spintronic components. We have already demonstrated this with chiral antiferromagnets,” says Woltersdorf.

“With our method has two advantages: on the one hand, we have greatly improved the spatial resolution of magnetic structures, far beyond the possibilities of optical methods. Secondly, it can also be applied to chiral antiferromagnetic systems, which will directly benefit our planned Cluster of Excellence ‘Centre for Chiral Electronics’,” says Woltersdorf.

Together with Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Regensburg, and the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, MLU is applying for funding as part of the Excellence Strategy. The aim of the research is to lay the foundations for new concepts for the electronics of the future.

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing


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Friday, November 22, 2024

Hausdorff Dimension of Fermions on Random Lattice Explained #sciencefath...

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Quantum Upgrade: Scientists May Have Just Solved Fusion’s Biggest Problem




Researchers have developed a method to enhance fusion energy efficiency by optimizing fuel mixtures and employing spin polarization.

This approach could significantly reduce tritium usage, leading to smaller and more manageable fusion reactors with lower operational costs and enhanced safety features.

Enhanced Fusion Fuels for Practical Energy

A new study published in the journal Nuclear Fusion suggests that modifying fusion fuels could address key challenges in making fusion a more practical energy source.

The approach builds on the established use of deuterium and tritium, the most promising fuels for fusion energy, but enhances their quantum properties through a technique called spin polarization. This method involves aligning the quantum spins of about half the fuel atoms for improved performance. Additionally, the proportion of deuterium in the fuel mix would be increased from the typical 60% or more, further optimizing efficiency.

Models developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) show that these adjustments allow tritium to burn significantly more efficiently while maintaining fusion power output. The result is a substantial reduction in the amount of tritium required to initiate and sustain fusion reactions, paving the way for smaller, more cost-effective fusion systems.

“Fusion is really, really hard, and nature doesn’t do you many favors,” said Jason Parisi, a staff research physicist at the Lab and first author on the research paper. “So, it was surprising how big the improvement was.”

The paper, which was published in the journal Nuclear Fusion, suggests the approach could burn tritium as much as 10 times more efficiently. The research also underscores PPPL’s role at the forefront of fusion innovation, particularly when it involves a system such as the one studied in Parisi’s research, where gasses are superheated to create a plasma confined by magnetic fields into a shape similar to a cored apple. The Lab’s primary fusion device, the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U), has a similar shape to the one the researchers considered when they tested their approach.
“This is the first time researchers have looked at how spin-polarized fuel could improve tritium-burn efficiency,” said staff research physicist and co-author Jacob Schwartz.

Maximizing Tritium Burn Efficiency

PPPL principal research physicist and co-author of the paper Ahmed Diallo likens tritium-burn efficiency to the efficiency of a gas stove. “When gas comes out of a stove, you want to burn all the gas,” Diallo said. “In a fusion device, typically, the tritium isn’t fully burned, and it is hard to come by. So, we wanted to improve the tritium-burn efficiency.”

The PPPL team consulted the fusion community and the broader community involved in spin polarization as a part of their work to find ways to enhance tritium-burn efficiency. “Fusion is one of the most multidisciplinary areas of science and engineering. It requires progress on so many fronts, but sometimes there are surprising results when you combine research from different disciplines and put it together,” Parisi said.

The Role of Quantum Spin in Fusion

Quantum spin is very different from the physical spin on a baseball. For example, a good pitcher can throw the ball with one of several different spins. There is a continuum of possibilities. However, there are only a few discrete options for the quantum spin on a particle – for example, up and down.

When two fusion fuel atoms have the same quantum spin, they are more likely to fuse. “By amplifying the fusion cross section, more power can be produced from the same amount of fuel,” said Parisi.

While existing spin-polarization methods don’t align every atom, the gains shown in the PPPL model don’t require 100% spin alignment. In fact, the study demonstrates that modest levels of spin polarization can substantially improve the efficiency of the tritium burn, improving overall efficiency and reducing tritium consumption.

Potential and Challenges of Spin-Polarized Fuel

With less tritium required, the overall size of the fusion power plant can be reduced, making it easier to license, situate and construct. Collectively, this should lower the operating costs of the fusion system.

Tritium is also radioactive, and while that radiation is relatively short-lived compared to the spent fuel from nuclear fission reactors, reducing the amount required has safety benefits because it decreases the risk of tritium leakage or contamination.

“The less tritium you have flowing through your system, the less of it will get into the components,” said Parisi. The storage and processing facilities required for the tritium can also be made much smaller and more efficient. This makes things like nuclear licensing easier. “People think that the site boundary size is somewhat proportional to how much tritium you have. So, if you can have a lot less tritium, your plant could be smaller, faster to get approved by regulators, and cheaper.”

New Avenues to Explore

The DOE’s Office of Science has funded separate research about some of the technologies needed to inject the spin-polarized fuel into the fusion vessel. Further work is needed to investigate things needed to implement the proposed system but have yet to be fully explored. “Whether it’s possible to have integrated scenarios that maintain a high-grade fusion plasma with these specific flows of excess fuel and ash from the plasma needs to be determined,” Schwartz said.

Diallo said there are also potential issues related to polarization methods, but these create opportunities. “One challenge would be to demonstrate techniques to produce spin-polarized fuel in large quantities and then store them. There’s a whole new technology area that would open up.”

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing
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Thursday, November 21, 2024

Exploring Particle Motion & Thermodynamics in Black Holes #sciencefather...

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Korean Scientists Achieve Unprecedented Real-Time Capture of Quantum Information





DGIST and UNIST researchers have discovered a new quantum state, the exciton-Floquet synthesis state, enabling real-time quantum information control in two-dimensional semiconductors.

A research team led by Professor Jaedong Lee from the Department of Chemical Physics at DGIST (President Kunwoo Lee) has unveiled a groundbreaking quantum state and an innovative mechanism for extracting and manipulating quantum information through exciton and Floquet states.

Collaborating with Professor Noejung Park from UNIST’s Department of Physics (President Chongrae Park), the team has, for the first time, demonstrated the formation and synthesis process of exciton and Floquet states, which arise from light-matter interactions in two-dimensional semiconductors. This study captures quantum information in real-time as it unfolds through entanglement, offering valuable insights into the exciton formation process in these materials, thereby advancing quantum information technology.

Advantages of Two-Dimensional Semiconductors

Unlike traditional three-dimensional solids, where quantum coherence is challenging to maintain owing to thermal influences, two-dimensional semiconductors feature energy levels for excitons and conduction bands that remain distinct owing to weaker screening effects, thus preserving coherence over extended periods. This distinction makes two-dimensional semiconductors promising for developing quantum information devices. Yet, until now, the coherence and decoherence mechanisms of electrons during exciton formation have been poorly understood.

Through theoretical calculations using time-resolved angular-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy on two-dimensional semiconductor materials, Professor Lee’s team confirmed that exciton formation coincides with the creation of a Floquet state, producing a combined new quantum state. Additionally, they identified the mechanism by which quantum entanglement occurs within this state and proposed a real-time method to extract, unfold, and control quantum information.

Professor Jaedong Lee, of DGIST’s Department of Chemical Physics, commented, “We have discovered a new quantum state, known as the exciton-Floquet synthesis state, and proposed a novel mechanism for quantum entanglement and quantum information extraction. This is anticipated to drive forward quantum information technology research in two-dimensional semiconductors.” UNIST’s Professor Noejung Park added, “This research sets a new paradigm for quantum information technology, including quantum computers, marking an important milestone for its realization.”

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing

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Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Constraining Galaxy-Halo Connection with Machine Learning #sciencefather...

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Scientists Smash Atoms to Smithereens, Revealing Hidden Nuclear Shapes







Scientists employ high-energy heavy ion collisions as a powerful tool to uncover intricate details of nuclear structure, offering insights with broad implications across various fields of physics.

Scientists have developed a novel technique using high-energy particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research located at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. Detailed in a newly published paper in Nature, this method complements lower-energy approaches for studying nuclear structure. It offers deeper insights into the shapes of atomic nuclei, enhancing our understanding of the building blocks of visible matter.

“In this new measurement, we not only quantify the overall shape of the nucleus whether it’s elongated like a football or squashed down like a tangerine but also the subtle triaxiality, the relative differences among its three principle axes that characterize a shape in between the ‘football’ and ‘tangerine,’” said Jiangyong Jia, a professor at Stony Brook University (SBU) who has a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab and is one of the principal authors on the STAR Collaboration publication.

Deciphering nuclear shapes has relevance to a wide range of physics questions, including which atoms are most likely to split in nuclear fission, how heavy atomic elements form in collisions of neutron stars, and which nuclei could point the way to exotic particle decay discoveries. Leveraging improved knowledge of nuclear shapes will also deepen scientists’ understanding of the initial conditions of a particle soup that mimics the early universe, which is created in RHIC’s energetic particle smashups. The method can be applied to analyzing additional data from RHIC as well as data collected from nuclear collisions at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It will also have relevance to future explorations of nuclei at the Electron-Ion Collider, a nuclear physics facility in the design stage at Brookhaven Lab.

Ultimately, since 99.9% of the visible matter that people and all the stars and planets of the cosmos are made of resides in the nuclei at the center of atoms, understanding these nuclear building blocks is at the heart of understanding who we are.

“The best way to demonstrate the robustness of nuclear physics knowledge gained at RHIC is to show that we can apply the technology and physics insights to other fields,” Jia said. “Now that we’ve demonstrated a robust way to image nuclear structure, there will be many applications.”

From long exposure to freeze-frame snapshots

For decades, scientists used low-energy experiments to infer nuclear shapes  for example, by exciting the nuclei and observing photons, or particles of light, emitted as the nuclei decay back to the ground state. This method probes the overall spatial arrangement of the protons inside the nucleus, but only at a relatively long time scale.

“In low-energy experiments, it’s like taking a long-exposure picture,” said Chun Shen, a theorist at Wayne State University whose calculations were used in the new analysis.

Because the exposure time is long, the low-energy methods do not capture all the subtle variations in the arrangement of protons that can occur inside a nucleus at very fast timescales. And because most of these methods use electromagnetic interactions, they can’t directly “see” the uncharged neutrons in the nucleus.

“You only get an average of the whole system,” said Dean Lee, a low-energy theorist at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Michigan State University. Though Lee and Shen are not co-authors on the study, they and other theorists have contributed to developing this new nuclear imaging method.

Reconstructing shapes from debris

How exactly does STAR see that complexity if the nuclei get destroyed? By tracking how particles fly out  and how fast  from the most central, head-on nuclear smashups.

As the STAR scientists note in their Nature paper, “In an ironic twist, this effectively realizes [famous physicist] Richard Feynman’s analogy of the seemingly impossible task of ‘figuring out a pocket watch by smashing two together and observing the flying debris.’”

From years of experiments at RHIC, the scientists know that high energy nuclear collisions melt the protons and neutrons of the nuclei to set free their inner building blocks, quarks and gluons. The shape and expansion of each hot blob of this melted nuclear matter, known as a quark-gluon plasma (QGP), is determined by the shape of the colliding nuclei. The shape and size of each QGP blob directly affect pressure gradients generated in that blob of plasma, which in turn influence the collective flow and momentum of particles emitted as the QGP cools.

The STAR scientists reasoned they could “reverse engineer” this relationship to derive information about nuclear structure. They analyzed the flow and momentum of particles emerging from collisions and compared them with models of hydrodynamic expansion for different QGP shapes to arrive at the shapes of the originally colliding nuclei.

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing

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