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Category: particle physics – Page 386

The LCLS-II will be the world’s brightest x-ray laser when it delivers “first light” in the early 2020’s. With this superconducting accelerator online, scientists will be able to see the hidden world of atoms and molecules like never before.
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Cover image credit: Nathan Taylor.

The LCLS is short for the Linac Coherent Light Source. It’s the world’s first hard x-ray free electron laser. The LCLS uses a particle accelerator to fire extremely bright electrons to create fast pulses of hard x-rays, which is why the machine is called an x-ray laser.

At the time of its first light in 2,009 the Linac Coherent Light Source generated x-ray pulses a billion times brighter than anything around. The LCLS is a tool unlike anything before it. We’re able to deliver these pulses of x-rays in one millionth of one billionth of a second.

The LCLS maxes out at 120 pulses per second. So to see the ultra small world like never before, scientists and engineers are building something new. The LCLS-II is going to take the free electron laser field up another quantum leap. This will be unprecedented and will allow for a beam that’s 8,000 times brighter than the LCLS beam and running at this million pulses per second.

#laser #xray #technology #seeker #science #focalpoint.

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Scientists just broke the record for the coldest temperature ever measured in a lab: They achieved the bone-chilling temperature of 38 trillionths of a degree above-273.15 Celsius by dropping magnetized gas 393 feet (120 meters) down a tower.

The team of German researchers was investigating the quantum properties of a so-called fifth state of matter: Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a derivative of gas that exists only under ultra-cold conditions. While in the BEC phase, matter itself begins to behave like one large atom, making it an especially appealing subject for quantum physicists who are interested in the mechanics of subatomic particles.

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When the Nobel Prize-winning US physicist Robert Hofstadter and his team fired highly energetic electrons at a small vial of hydrogen at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1,956 they opened the door to a new era of physics.

Until then, it was thought that protons and neutrons, which make up an atom’s nucleus, were the most fundamental particles in nature.

They were considered to be ‘dots’ in space, lacking physical dimensions. Now it suddenly became clear that these particles were not fundamental at all, and had a size and complex internal structure as well.

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Quantum technology typically employs qubits (quantum bits) consisting of, for example, single electrons, photons or atoms. A group of TU Delft researchers has now demonstrated the ability to teleport an arbitrary qubit state from a single photon onto an optomechanical device—consisting of a mechanical structure comprising billions of atoms. Their breakthrough research, now published in Nature Photonics, enables real-world applications such as quantum internet repeater nodes while also allowing quantum mechanics itself to be studied in new ways.

Quantum optomechanics

The field of quantum optomechanics uses optical means to control mechanical motion in the quantum regime. The first quantum effects in microscale mechanical devices were demonstrated about ten years ago. Focused efforts have since resulted in entangled states between optomechanical devices as well as demonstrations of an optomechanical quantum memory. Now, the group of Simon Gröblacher, of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience and the Department of Quantum Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Campinas in Brazil, has shown the first successful teleportation of an arbitrary optical qubit state onto a micromechanical quantum memory.

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Circa 2009

The futuristic thought of antimatter that is typically related to sci-fi movies may one day be able to provide propulsion to vehicles. Antimatter, is an exact oppposite copy of matter. Identical to matter, but with its electrical charge completely opposite of the original matter. Think of a battery with a positive and negative pole. The positive pole repsresenting matter, and the negative pole representing antimatter.

Antimatter is the exact oposite of matter. A definition as provided by Wikipedia concludes that antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example, an antielectron (a positron, an electron with a positive charge) and an antiproton (a proton with a negative charge) could form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing matter and antimatter would lead to the annihilation of both in the same way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs.

Seems like a bunch of info for the physicists out there. But where does antimatter come in for vehicle propulsion and how does it apply to electric vehicles. The violent explosion created when matter and anitmatter collide results in considerable energy in the form of movement of protons and electrons similar to the proces of electricity moving, though at a signifacntly higher rate. This explosion, if harnessed correctly could provide thrust to a vehicle.

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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have achieved a near 100 percent increase in the amount of antimatter created in the laboratory.

Using targets with micro-structures on the laser interface, the team shot a high-intensity laser through them and saw a 100 percent increase in the amount of antimatter (also known as positrons). The research appears in Applied Physics Letters.

Previous research using a tiny gold sample created about 100 billion particles of antimatter. The new experiments double that.

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Remember the philosophical argument our universe is a simulation? Well, a team of astrophysicists say they’ve created the biggest simulated universe yet. But you won’t find any virtual beings in it—or even planets or stars.

The simulation is 9.6 billion light-years to a side, so its smallest structures are still enormous (the size of small galaxies). The model’s 2.1 trillion particles simulate the dark matter glue holding the universe together.

Named Uchuu, or Japanese for “outer space,” the simulation covers some 13.8 billion years and will help scientists study how dark matter has driven cosmic evolution since the Big Bang.

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