Category Physics

A prototype station of AugerPrime: Every water-Cherenkov detector containing 12,000 l of water is extended by a four-square-meter scintillation detector. Credit: Pierre Auger Collaboration

The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, an international large-scale experiment to study cosmic rays, will be continued until 2025 and extended to “AugerPrime”. The observatory will be upgraded with new scintillation detectors for a more detailed measurement of gigantic air showers. This is required to identify cosmic objects that accelerate atomic particles up to highest energies.

The Pierre Auger Observatory in the province of Mendoza/Argentina is the world’s biggest and best known project for studying high-energy cosmic rays...

Left: Allowed states for the standard type-I Weyl fermion. When energy is tuned from below, at zero energy, a pinch in the number of allowed states guarantees the absence of many-body phenomena such as superconductivity or ordering. Right: The newly discovered type-II Weyl fermion. At zero energy, a large number of allowed states are still available. This allows for the presence of superconductivity, magnetism, and pair-density wave phenomena. Credit: B. Andrei Bernevig et al.

An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of a new type of particle called the type-II Weyl fermion in metallic materials. When subjected to a magnetic field, the materials act as insulators for current applied in some directions and as conductors for current applied in other directions...

This is an example of an inkjet printed rainbow hologram. Credit: ITMO University

This new method is expected to significantly reduce the cost and time needed to create the so-called rainbow holograms, commonly used for security purposes – to protect valuable items, such as credit cards and paper currency, from piracy and falsification.

The team, led by Alexander Vinogradov, SCAMT in ITMO University, developed colorless ink made of nanocrystalline titania, which can be loaded into an inkjet printer and then deposited on special microembossed paper, resulting in unique patterned images. The ink makes it possible to print custom holographic images on transparent film in a matter of minutes, instead of days as with the use of conventional methods.

“The conventional way of preparing a rainbow ...

An artist’s representation of the nanoparticle removal chip developed by researchers in Professor Michael Heller’s lab at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. An oscillating electric field (purple arcs) separates drug-delivery nanoparticles (yellow spheres) from blood (red spheres) and pulls them towards rings surrounding the chip’s electrodes. The image is featured as the inside cover of the Oct. 14 issue of the journal Small. Credit: Stuart Ibsen and Steven Ibsen.

A new technology that uses an oscillating electric field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from blood has been developed by a team of engineers...