Category Physics

Most of us know pectin as a key ingredient for making delicious jellies and jams, not as a component for a complex hybrid device that links biological and electronic systems. But a team of Italian scientists have built on previous work using pectin with a high degree of methylation as the medium to create a new architecture of hybrid device with a double-layered polyelectrolyte that alone drives memristive behavior. A memristive device is a synapse analogue, a device that has a memory. Its behavior in a certain moment depends on its previous activity, similar to the way information in the human brain is transmitted from one neuron to another.

“In this research, we applied materials generally used in the pharmaceutical and food industries in our electrochemical devices,” said Angelica Cifa...

New research is paving the way to producing quantum communications networks. (stock image) Credit: © agsandrew / Fotolia

From stationary to flying qubits at speeds never reached before….This feat, achieved by a team from Polytechnique Montréal and France’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), brings us a little closer to the era when information is transmitted via quantum principles. The creation of a qubit in zinc selenide, a well-known semi-conductor material, made it possible to produce an interface between quantum physics that governs the behaviour of matter on a nanometre scale and the transfer of information at the speed of light, thereby paving the way to producing quantum communications networks.

In quantum physics, single electrons can take the value of 0, 1 or...

There are two different ways the helium atom can be ionized.

Scientists have observed how quantum superpositions build up in a helium atom within femtoseconds. Just like the two paths through the plate in the double slit experiment, the ionization of helium can happen via 2 different processes at the same time, and this leads to characteristic interference effects. In the case of the helium atom, they are called “Fano resonances.” A team from TU Wien (Vienna), Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and Kansas State University has now managed to observe the buildup up of these Fano resonances.

When a laser pulse transfers enough energy to one of the electrons in the helium atom, the electron is ripped out of the atom right away...

The team used conventional laboratory filter paper as a structural template due to its long fibers and the stable structure. Credit: Institute for Complex Systems /Rome

A team has built the first controllable random laser based on cellulose paper in Straubing. Hence, materials no longer need to be artificially outfitted with disordered structures, utilizing naturally occurring ones instead. Material synthesis that is inspired by biology is an area of research at TUM’s Chair of Biogenic Polymers at Straubing Center of Science. It utilizes models from nature and biogenic materials to develop new materials and technologies.

Two components are necessary for a laser: First of all, a medium which amplifies light. And secondly, a structure which retains the light in the medium...