Category Physics

Researchers develop compact superradiant Smith-Purcell device with ultra-narrow linewidth

Pump-induced stimulated superradiant smith-purcell radiation with ultra-narrow linewidth
A schematic view of the pump-induced stimulated superradiant Smith-Purcell radiation (PIS-SPR) device, which consists of the electron pre-bunching, electron-compression and harmonic-emission section. Based on PIS-SPR, the free electron beam is well bunched and ultra-narrow spectral linewidth at THz frequency region has been observed. Credit: eLight (2025). DOI: 10.1186/s43593-025-00083-z

Superradiant Smith-Purcell radiation (S-SPR) is a kind of free electron radiation with a train of free electron bunches passing over a periodic grating. In theory, the ultra-narrow spectral linewidth of S-SPR could be realized which would be greatly beneficial to various applications such as imaging, sensing and communication.

However, in the free electron accelerators, customized setups and orotr...

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Novel technique overcomes spurious correlations problem in AI

ai
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

AI models often rely on “spurious correlations,” making decisions based on unimportant and potentially misleading information. Researchers have now discovered these learned spurious correlations can be traced to a very small subset of the training data and have demonstrated a technique that overcomes the problem. The work has been published on the arXiv preprint server.

“This technique is novel in that it can be used even when you have no idea what spurious correlations the AI is relying on,” says Jung-Eun Kim, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University.

“If you already have a good idea of what the spurious features are, our technique is an efficient and effective...

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Programmable photonic chip uses light to accelerate AI training and cut energy use

Penn engineers first to train AI at lightspeed
Postdoctoral fellow Tianwei Wu (left) and Professor Liang Feng (right) in the lab, demonstrating some of the apparatus used to develop the new, light-powered chip. Credit: Sylvia Zhang.

Penn Engineers have developed the first programmable chip that can train nonlinear neural networks using light—a breakthrough that could dramatically speed up AI training, reduce energy use and even pave the way for fully light-powered computers.

While today’s AI chips are electronic and rely on electricity to perform calculations, the new chip is photonic, meaning it uses beams of light instead. Described in Nature Photonics, the chip reshapes how light behaves to carry out the nonlinear mathematics at the heart of modern AI.

“Nonlinear functions are critical for training deep neural networks,”...

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New model can generate audio and music tracks from diverse data inputs

In recent years, computer scientists have created various highly performing machine learning tools to generate texts, images, videos, songs and other content. Most of these computational models are designed to create content based on text-based instructions provided by users.

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology recently introduced AudioX, a model that can generate high quality audio and music tracks using texts, video footage, images, music and audio recordings as inputs. Their model, introduced in a paper published on the arXiv preprint server, relies on a diffusion transformer, an advanced machine learning algorithm that leverages the so-called transformer architecture to generate content by progressively de-noising the input data it receives.

“Ou...

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