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Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, or CNMS, contributed to a groundbreaking experiment published in Science that tracks the real-time transport of individual molecules.

A team led by the University of Graz, Austria, used unique four-probe scanning tunneling microscopy, or STM, to move a single molecule between two independent probes and observe it disappear from one point and instantaneously reappear at the other.

The STM, made available via the CNMS user program, operates under an applied voltage, scanning material surfaces with a sharp probe that can move atoms and molecules by nudging them a few nanometers at a time. This instrument made it possible to send and receive dibromoterfluorene molecules 150 nanometers across a silver surface with unprecedented control.

“Klein tunnelling” has been observed directly for the first time.

A curious effect called “Klein tunnelling” has been observed for the first time in an experiment involving sound waves in a phononic crystal. As well as confirming the century-old prediction that relativistic particles (those travelling at speeds approaching the speed of light) can pass through an energy barrier with 100% transmission, the research done in China and the US could lead to better sonar and ultrasound imaging.

Quantum tunnelling refers to the ability of a particle to pass through a potential-energy barrier, despite having insufficient energy to cross if the system is described by classical physics. Tunnelling is a result of wave–particle duality in quantum mechanics, whereby the wave function of a particle extends into and beyond a barrier.

Continue reading “Relativistic quasiparticles tunnel through barrier with 100% transmission, verifying century-old prediction” »

The odd, wavy pattern that results from viewing certain phone or computer screens through polarized glasses has led researchers to take a step toward thinner, lighter-weight lenses. Called moiré, the pattern is made by laying one material with opaque and translucent parts at an angle over another material of similar contrast.

A team of researchers from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, TUAT, in Japan have demonstrated that moiré metalenses—tiny, patterned lenses composed of artificial ‘meta’ atoms—can tune focal length along a wider range than previously seen. They published their results on November 23 in Optics Express.

“Metalenses have attracted a lot of interest because they are so thin and lightweight, and could be used in ultra-compact imaging systems, like future smart phones, virtual reality goggles, drones or microbots,” said paper author Kentaro Iwami, associate professor in the TUAT Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering.

The human eye is a surprisingly good photon detector. What can it spy of the line between the quantum and classical worlds?

I spent a lot of time in the dark in graduate school. Not just because I was learning the field of quantum optics – where we usually deal with one particle of light or photon at a time – but because my research used my own eyes as a measurement tool. I was studying how humans perceive the smallest amounts of light, and I was the first test subject every time.

I conducted these experiments in a closet-sized room on the eighth floor of the psychology department at the University of Illinois, working alongside my graduate advisor, Paul Kwiat, and psychologist Ranxiao Frances Wang. The space was equipped with special blackout curtains and a sealed door to achieve total darkness. For six years, I spent countless hours in that room, sitting in an uncomfortable chair with my head supported in a chin rest, focusing on dim, red crosshairs, and waiting for tiny flashes delivered by the most precise light source ever built for human vision research. My goal was to quantify how I (and other volunteer observers) perceived flashes of light from a few hundred photons down to just one photon.

Continue reading “An eye on experiments that make quantum mechanics visible” »

A membrane between what is inside the solar system and the outside. 😃

NASA‘s New Horizons spacecraft has helped scientists study a mysterious phenomenon at the edge of the Solar System, where particles from the Sun and interstellar space interact.

This region, about 100 times further from the Sun than Earth, is where uncharged hydrogen atoms from interstellar space meet charged particles from our Sun. The latter extend out from our Sun in a bubble called the heliosphere.

Continue reading “A NASA Spacecraft May Have Detected A Giant Wall At The Edge Of The Solar System” »

Silicon has proved to be a highly valuable and reliable material for fabricating a variety of technologies, including quantum devices. In recent years, researchers have also been investigating the possible advantages of using individual artificial atoms to enhance the performance of silicon-based integrated quantum circuits. So far, however, single qubits with an optical interface have proved difficult to isolate in silicon.

Researchers at Université de Montpellier and CNRS, University Leipzig and other universities in Europe have recently successfully isolated single, optically active artificial atoms in silicon for the first time. Their paper, published in Nature Electronics, could have important implications for the development of new silicon-based quantum optics devices.

“Our study was born from the will to isolate new individual artificial atoms with a telecom optical interface in a material suitable for large-scale industrial processes,” Anaïs Dr.éau, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “We are used to investigating these quantum systems, but in wide-bandgap semiconductors, such as diamond or hexagonal boron nitride. Although silicon is the most widespread material within the microelectronics industry, so far no light emitter has been reported in this small-bandgap semiconductor.”

Just say no to cat murder.

One of the first times quantum mechanics entered popular culture, “Schrödinger’s Cat” remains a puzzling thought experiment in which a poor cat’s fate remains unknown inside a box. But scientists now say that the paradox at the heart of the puzzle could be determined ahead of time, or even reversed.

First, a recap of Schrodinger’s Cat. Created by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, it looks at a theory of quantum mechanics known as the Copenhagen interpretation. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, a quantum system will exist in superposition up until the moment it interacts with the real observable world in any way. When discussing quantum theory, the Institute of Physics says that a superposition is the idea that a particle can be in two places at once.

Nearly 75 years after the puzzling first detection of the kaon, scientists are still looking to the particle for hints of physics beyond their current understanding.

Extremely massive fundamental particles could exist, but they would seriously mess with our understanding of quantum mechanics.

O,.o kaons in action for interstellar travel: D.

Interstellar probes and future interstellar travel will require relativistic rockets. The problem is that such a rocket drive requires that the rocket exhaust velocity from the fuel also is relativistic, since otherwise the rocket thrust is much too small: the total mass of the fuel will be so large that relativistic speeds cannot be reached in a reasonable time and the total mass of the rocket will be extremely large. Until now, no technology was known that would be able to give rocket exhaust at relativistic speed and a high enough momentum for relativistic travel. Here, a useful method for relativistic interstellar propulsion is described for the first time. This method gives exhaust at relativistic speeds and is a factor of at least one hundred better than normal fusion due to its increased energy output from the annihilation-like meson formation processes. It uses ordinary hydrogen as fuel so a return travel is possible after refuelling almost anywhere in space. The central nuclear processes have been studied in around 20 publications, which is considered to be sufficient evidence for the general properties. The nuclear processes give relativistic particles (kaons, pions and muons) by laser-induced annihilation-like processes in ultra-dense hydrogen H. The kinetic energy of the mesons is 1300 times larger than the energy of the laser pulse. This method is superior to the laser-sail method by several orders of magnitude and is suitable for large spaceships.