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Category: particle physics – Page 11

Real-time single-event position detection using high-radiation-tolerance GaN

Silicon semiconductors are widely used as particle detectors; however, their long-term operation is constrained by performance degradation in high-radiation environments. Researchers at University of Tsukuba have demonstrated real-time, two-dimensional position detection of individual charged particles using a gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor with superior radiation tolerance.

Silicon (Si)-based devices are widely used in electrical and electronic applications; however, prolonged exposure to high radiation doses leads to performance degradation, malfunction, and eventual failure. These limitations create a strong demand for alternative semiconductor materials capable of operating reliably in harsh environments, including high-energy accelerator experiments, nuclear-reactor containment systems, and long-duration lunar or deep-space missions.

Wide-bandgap semiconductors, characterized by strong atomic bonding, offer the radiation tolerance required under such conditions. Among these materials, gallium nitride (GaN)—commonly employed in blue light-emitting diodes and high-frequency, high-power electronic devices—has not previously been demonstrated in detectors capable of two-dimensional particle-position sensing for particle and nuclear physics applications.

Massive Quantum Leap: New Tech Could Enable 100,000-Qubit Computers

They combined optical tweezers with metasurfaces to trap more than 1,000 atoms, with the potential to capture hundreds of thousands more. Quantum computers will only surpass classical machines if they can operate with far more quantum bits, known as qubits. Today’s most advanced systems contain r

SOME PHYSICISTS SUGGEST GRAVITY ISN’T A FORCE AT ALL — BUT A QUANTUM ECHO OF ENTANGLEMENT

Gravity is the most familiar force in human experience, yet it remains the least understood at a fundamental level. Despite centuries of study—from Newton’s law of universal gravitation to Einstein’s general theory of relativity—gravity stubbornly resists unification with quantum mechanics. In recent decades, this tension has led some physicists to propose a radical rethinking of gravity’s nature. According to these ideas, gravity may not be a fundamental force at all, but instead an emergent effect arising from quantum entanglement and the flow of information in spacetime.

This perspective represents a profound conceptual shift. Rather than treating gravity as something particles “exert” on one another, these theories suggest it emerges statistically, much like temperature arises from the collective motion of atoms. This article examines the scientific foundations of this idea, the key theoretical frameworks supporting it, and the evidence—both suggestive and incomplete—that motivates such claims. By analyzing gravity through quantum, thermodynamic, and informational lenses, we gain insight into one of the most ambitious research directions in modern theoretical physics.

The Standard Model of particle physics successfully describes three of the four fundamental interactions: electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force. Gravity, however, remains outside this framework. Attempts to quantize gravity using the same methods applied to other forces lead to mathematical infinities that cannot be renormalized.

Ultrafast Movie Reveals Unexpected Plasma Behavior

Using a camera with 2-picosecond time resolution, researchers show that the atoms in a laser-induced plasma are more highly ionized than theory predicts.

With an astonishing 500 billion frames per second, a new movie captures the evolution of a laser-induced plasma, revealing that its atoms have lost more electrons—and thus have stronger interactions within the plasma—than models predict [1]. The movie relies on a ten-year-old technology, called compressed ultrafast photography (CUP), that packs all the information for hundreds of movie frames into a single image. The results suggest that models of plasma formation may need revising, which could have implications for inertial-confinement-fusion experiments, such as those at the National Ignition Facility in California.

Dense plasmas occur in many astrophysical settings and laboratory experiments. Their behavior is difficult to predict, as they often change on picosecond (10−12 s) timescales. A traditional method for probing this behavior is to use a streak camera, which collects a movie on a single image by capturing a small slice of each movie frame. “It’s one picture, but every line occurs at a different time,” explains John Koulakis from UCLA. He and his colleagues have used streak cameras to study anomalous behavior in plasmas [2], but the small region of plasma visible with this technique left doubts about what they were seeing, he says.

Record-breaking photons at telecom wavelengths—on demand

A team of researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg led by Prof. Stefanie Barz (University of Stuttgart) has demonstrated a source of single photons that combines on-demand operation with record-high photon quality in the telecommunications C-band—a key step toward scalable photonic quantum computation and quantum communication. “The lack of a high-quality on-demand C-band photon source has been a major problem in quantum optics laboratories for over a decade—our new technology now removes this obstacle,” says Prof. Stefanie Barz.

In everyday life, distinguishing features may often be desirable. Few want to be exactly like everyone else. When it comes to quantum technologies, however, complete indistinguishability is the name of the game. Quantum particles such as photons that are identical in all their properties can interfere with each other—much as in noise-canceling headphones, where sound waves that are precisely inverted copies of the incoming noise cancel out the background.

When identical photons are made to act in synchrony, then the probability that certain measurement outcomes occur can be either boosted or decreased. Such quantum effects give rise to powerful new phenomena that lie at the heart of emerging technologies such as quantum computing and quantum networking. For these technologies to become feasible, high-quality interference between photons is essential.

Quantum mechanical effects help overcome a fundamental limitation of optical microscopy

Researchers from Regensburg and Birmingham have overcome a fundamental limitation of optical microscopy. With the help of quantum mechanical effects, they succeeded for the first time in performing optical measurements with atomic resolution. Their work is published in the journal Nano Letters.

From smartphone cameras to space telescopes, the desire to see ever finer detail has driven technological progress. Yet as we probe smaller and smaller length scales, we encounter a fundamental boundary set by light itself. Because light behaves as a wave, it cannot be focused arbitrarily sharply due to an effect called diffraction. As a result, conventional optical microscopes are unable to resolve structures much smaller than the wavelength of light, placing the very building blocks of matter beyond direct optical observation.

Now, researchers at the Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy, together with colleagues at the University of Birmingham, have found a novel way to overcome this limitation. Using standard continuous-wave lasers, they have achieved optical measurements at distances comparable to the spacing between individual atoms.

Liquid-repellent particle coating enables near-frictionless motion of pico- to nanoliter droplets

The precise control of tiny droplets on surfaces is essential for advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and next‐generation lab‐on‐a‐chip diagnostics. However, once droplet volume reaches pico- and nanoliter scales, the droplets become extremely sensitive to microscopic surface irregularities, and friction at the solid‐liquid interface becomes a major obstacle to smooth transport.

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