Category Physics

New Third Class of Magnetism could transform Digital Memory: Experiment bridges theory and real-life realization

A new class of magnetism called altermagnetism has been imaged for the first time in a new study. The findings could lead to the development of new magnetic memory devices with the potential to increase operation speeds of up to a thousand times.

Altermagnetism is a distinct form of magnetic order where the tiny constituent magnetic building blocks align antiparallel to their neighbors but the structure hosting each one is rotated compared to its neighbors.

Scientists from the University of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy have shown that this new third class of magnetism exists and can be controlled in microscopic devices. The findings have been published in Nature.

Professor Peter Wadley, who led the research, explains, “Altermagnets consist of magnetic moments ...

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Rethinking the Quantum Chip

Researchers in Cleland Lab at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, including (from left) alumnus Haoxiong Yan, PhD candidate Xuntao Wu, and Prof. Andrew Cleland, have realized a new design for a superconducting quantum processor. (Photo by John Zich)

New research demonstrates a brand-new architecture for scaling up superconducting quantum devices. Researchers at the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have realized a new design for a superconducting quantum processor, aiming at a potential architecture for the large-scale, durable devices the quantum revolution demands.

Unlike the typical quantum chip design that lays the information-processing qubits onto a 2-D grid, the team from the Cleland Lab has designed a modular qua...

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Battery-like Computer Memory Keeps Working Above 1,000°F

Battery-like computer memory keeps working above 1,000°F

The memory devices fabricated using tantalum oxide on this chip can store data for both conventional memory and in-memory computing above 1,000°F. Credit: Brenda Ahearn, Michigan Engineering

Computer memory could one day withstand the blazing temperatures in fusion reactors, jet engines, geothermal wells and sweltering planets using a new solid-state memory device developed by a team of engineers led by the University of Michigan.

Unlike conventional silicon-based memory, the new device can store and rewrite information at temperatures over 1,100°F (600°C)—hotter than the surface of Venus and the melting temperature of lead. It was developed in collaboration with researchers at Sandia National Laboratory.

“It could enable electronic devices that didn’t exist for high-tempera...

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AI infiltrates the rat world: New Robot can Interact Socially with Real Lab Rats

A robot rat that interreacts socially with real lab rats
Robot–rat social interaction paradigm: a rat-like robot plays the role of a rat conspecific to interact with another rat via multiple interaction patterns.Nature Machine Intelligence (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-024-00939-y

A team of roboticists at the Beijing Institute of Technology, working with a pair of colleagues from the Technical University of Munich, has created a new kind of rat robot—one that was designed to interact in social ways with real rats.

In their paper published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, the group describes how they used artificial intelligence to train their robot rat to behave like a real rat...

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