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    Category Physics

    Photons collide in the void: Quantum simulation creates light out of nothing

    June 11, 2025, Categories  Technology/Electronics, Physics

    Illustration of photon-photon scattering in the laboratory. Two green petawatt lasers beams collide at the focus with a third red beam to polarise the quantum vacuum. This allows a fourth blue laser beam to be generated, with a unique direction and colour, which conserves momemtum and energy.

    Using advanced computational modelling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior Técnico in the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the ‘quantum vacuum’ — a state once assumed to be empty, but which quantum physics predicts is full of virtual electron-positron pairs.

    The results have been published in Communications Physics.
    Using advanced computational modelling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior Técnico in the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the ‘quantum vacuum’ — a state once ass...

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    Physicists set new world record for qubit operation accuracy

    June 10, 2025, Categories  Physics

    Oxford physicists set new world record for qubit operation accuracy
    A rendering of the Oxford University team’s ion trap chip. Credit: Dr. Jochen Wolf and Dr. Tom Harty.

    Physicists at the University of Oxford have set a new global benchmark for the accuracy of controlling a single quantum bit, achieving the lowest-ever error rate for a quantum logic operation—just 0.000015%, or one error in 6.7 million operations. This record-breaking result represents nearly an order of magnitude improvement over the previous benchmark, set by the same research group a decade ago.

    To put the result in perspective: a person is more likely to be struck by lightning in a given year (1 in 1.2 million) than for one of Oxford’s quantum logic gates to make a mistake.

    The findings, to be published in Physical Review Letters, are a major advance towards having robust a...

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    Nonreciprocal light speed control achieved using cavity magnonics device

    June 9, 2025, Categories  Physics

    Study demonstrates nonreciprocal control of the speed of light using a cavity magnonics device
    Photons in a dielectric resonator (yellow) interact with magnons in a YIG sphere (violet) via a microstrip (gray). This interaction acts as a ‘traffic light’ for microwave pulses—speeding them up (green) in one direction and slowing them down (red) in the other, controllable by a magnetic field. Credit: Yao et al.

    The reliable manipulation of the speed at which light travels through objects could have valuable implications for the development of various advanced technologies, including high-speed communication systems and quantum information processing devices...

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    Laser-induced graphene enables greener, flexible hybrid circuit manufacturing

    June 6, 2025, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Breakthrough in flexible printed circuit boards: Laser-induced graphene enables sustainable hybrid circuit manufacturing
    The process flow for creating Cu-LIG FHEs. Starting from top-left and clockwise to the right: creating a mixture of Pd and SU-8, spin-coating onto a polyimide film and drying, forming LIG from the Pd/SU-8 ink on a polyimide substrate and finally, electroless-copper plating to form conductive circuit elements. Credit: Advanced Materials Technologies (2025). DOI: 10.1002/admt.202401901

    Boise State University researchers have unveiled a cutting-edge approach to manufacturing flexible hybrid circuits—reducing costs, waste, and environmental impact. Their work leverages the properties of laser-induced graphene and was recently featured on the cover of Advanced Materials Technologies.

    Laser-induced graphene uses a single-step laser manufacturing process that converts carbon-rich mater...

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