Physics

Sep 17th, 2025 - Some atoms are stable, while others seem to fall apart. Lead-208 will probably last forever, while the synthetic isotope technetium-99 exists for just hours. The difference lies in the structure of the atom's nucleus, with certain "magic numbers" of nuclear particles making some isotopes especially resistant to radioactive decay. So what are these magic numbers, and why are they so special? The stability of atomic nuclei varies wildly with the number of nuclear particles they contain. Some, ... [Read More]

Sep 16th, 2025 - Physicists turn to nuclear clocks in the hunt for dark matter For all our telescopes and colliders, dark matter has remained an elusive ghost for the better part of a century. It outweighs everything we see by a factor of five, yet it slips past every detector built to catch it. Now, a team led by the Weizmann Institute of Science, with collaborators in Germany and Colorado, has turned to a nuclear clock with the hope of revealing the faint fingerprints of this hidden matter. At their hearts, ... [Read More]

Sep 16th, 2025 - Caltech scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI)–based method that dramatically speeds up calculations of the quantum interactions that take place in materials. In new work, the group focuses on interactions among atomic vibrations, or phonons—interactions that govern a wide range of material properties, including heat transport, thermal expansion, and phase transitions. The new machine learning approach could be extended to compute all quantum interactions, ... [Read More]

Sep 16th, 2025 - Trapping ultracold atoms with laser light let researchers magnify and then image the wave functions of atoms that were previously too close together to look like anything but a blob Extremely cold atoms have been nudged to self-magnify their quantum states so they can be imaged in unprecedented detail. This could help researchers better understand what quantum particles do in odd materials like superconductors and superfluids . It is generally very difficult to image the quantum states of atoms ... [Read More]

Sep 15th, 2025 - A team led by Prof. Yan Lu, HZB, and Prof. Arne Thomas, Technical University of Berlin, has developed a material that enhances the capacity and stability of lithium-sulfur batteries. The material is based on polymers that form a framework with open pores (known as radical-cationic covalent organic frameworks or COFs). Catalytically accelerated reactions take place in these pores, firmly trapping polysulfides, which would shorten the battery life. Some of the experimental analyses were conducted ... [Read More]

Sep 14th, 2025 - By Ian Scheffler, University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science Share A new integrated chip demonstrates how quantum networks could communicate using today's internet protocols over existing commercial fiber-optic cables. In a groundbreaking experiment, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania successfully extended quantum networking beyond the laboratory by transmitting signals over commercial fiber-optic cables using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that drives ... [Read More]

Sep 14th, 2025 - By Share Matter can exist in different forms, or phases, such as liquid water or solid ice. These phases are usually understood under equilibrium conditions, where everything remains stable over time. However, nature also permits much stranger possibilities: phases that appear only when a system is pushed out of equilibrium. A new study published in Nature demonstrates that quantum computers provide a powerful new tool for investigating these unusual states of matter. In contrast to ordinary ... [Read More]

Sep 5th, 2025 - By Mary Martialay, Purdue University Share A new calculation shows how five atoms interact in the Efimov effect. It marks a major leap in quantum physics. Matter behaves weirdly at the quantum scale, one of the strangest examples being the Efimov effect. In this state, three or more atoms can bind together through attractive forces even when excited to higher energy levels, yet the same forces are too weak to hold just two atoms. Researchers at Purdue University have now carried out the ... [Read More]

Sep 1st, 2025 - By CERN Share CMS employed machine learning to probe rare Higgs decays into charm quarks. The search produced the most stringent limits so far. The Higgs boson, first observed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012, is a cornerstone of the Standard Model of particle physics. Through its interactions, it gives fundamental particles such as quarks their mass. Interactions between the Higgs boson and the heaviest "third-generation" quarks—the top and bottom quarks—have already been ... [Read More]

Aug 29th, 2025 - By University of Innsbruck Share Scientists have discovered a clever new way to control the light emitted by quantum dots — tiny crystals that can release individual photons. The advance could lead to faster, cheaper, and more practical quantum technologies, from ultra-secure communication systems to experiments that explore the strange foundations of quantum physics. The Challenge of Single-Photon Sources Quantum dots are tiny semiconductor structures capable of releasing single photons ... [Read More]

Aug 28th, 2025 - By Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe Share Scientists uncovered universal laws of entanglement in any dimension. The results strengthen links between particle physics, quantum theory, and gravity. A group of theoretical physicists has shown that quantum entanglement obeys universal principles in every dimension by applying thermal effective theory. Their findings were recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters , where the paper was selected as an ... [Read More]

Aug 25th, 2025 - By University of Sydney Physicists at the University of Sydney have achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing by creating a universal logic gate inside a single atom . Using a powerful error-correcting system known as the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code — often called the "Rosetta Stone" of quantum computing — they managed to entangle vibrations of a trapped ion. This achievement drastically reduces the number of physical qubits needed, tackling one of the biggest hurdles in ... [Read More]

Aug 21st, 2025 - A team of researchers has discovered how a little-known type of symmetry in quantum materials, called nonsymmorphic symmetry, governs the way these materials interact with intense laser light. The work is in Physical Review Applied as a Letter. The findings reveal surprising effects—including the suppression of even-order response and striking polarization-dependent responses—that could enable the design of next-generation lightwave-based electronics and quantum devices . When ... [Read More]

Aug 20th, 2025 - Whether in solar cells or in the human eye, whenever certain molecules absorb light, the electrons within them shift from their ground state into a higher-energy, excited state. This results in the transport of energy and charge, leading to charge separation and eventually to the generation of electricity. An international team of scientists led by Dr. Antonietta De Sio and Prof. Dr. Christoph Lienau from the Ultrafast Nano-Optics research group at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, has now ... [Read More]

Aug 17th, 2025 - , Phys.org Topological quantum systems are physical systems exhibiting properties that depend on the overall connectivity of their underlying lattice, as opposed to local interactions and their microscopic structure. Predicting the evolution of these systems over time and their long-range quantum correlations is often challenging, as their behavior is not defined by magnetization or other parameters linked to local interactions. Researchers at École Polytechnique Fédérale ... [Read More]

Aug 16th, 2025 - New experiments focused on understanding the enigmatic neutrino may offer insights. Everything we see around us, from the ground beneath our feet to the most remote galaxies, is made of matter. For scientists, that has long posed a problem: According to physicists' best current theories, matter and its counterpart, antimatter, ought to have been created in equal amounts at the time of the Big Bang. But antimatter is vanishingly rare in the universe. So what happened? Physicists don't know the ... [Read More]