Category Physics

Neutrinos are cosmic tricksters, paradoxically hardly there but lethal to stars significantly more massive than the sun...

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have discovered a new state of quantum matter. The state exists within a material that the team reports could lead to a new era of self-charging computers and ones capable of withstanding the challenges of deep space travel.

“It’s a new phase of matter, similar to how water can exist as liquid, ice or vapor,” said Luis A. Jauregui, professor of physics & astronomy at UC Irvine and corresponding author of the new paper in Physical Review Letters.

“It’s only been theoretically predicted—no one has ever measured it until now.”

This new phase is li...

In the race toward practical quantum computers and networks, photons hold intriguing possibilities as fast carriers of information at room temperature.

Photons are typically controlled and coaxed into quantum states via waveguides on extended microchips, or through bulky devices built from lenses, mirrors, and beam splitters. The photons become entangled—enabling them to encode and process quantum information in parallel—through complex networks of these optical components. But such systems are notoriously difficult to scale up due to the large numbers and imperfections of parts required to do any meaningful computation or networking.

Could all those optical components be collapsed into a single, flat, ultra-thin array of subwavelength elements that control light in the exac...

Researchers at SLAC’s Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) instrument used a laser to superheat a sample of gold. Then, they sent a pulse of ultrabright X-rays from the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) through the sample to measure the speed, and thus the temperature, of the atoms vibrating in the sample.

Researchers taking the first-ever direct measurement of atom temperature in extremely hot materials inadvertently disproved a decades-old theory and upended our understanding of s...