Quantum Physics News

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International Team of Scientists Discover Elusive Massless Particle

An international team led by Princeton University scientists has discovered an elusive massless particle theorized 85 years ago. The particle could give rise to faster and more efficient electronics because of its unusual ability to behave as matter and antimatter inside a crystal, according to new research.

17 Jul 2015

UT Austin Scientists Receive $1.5 Million Keck Foundation Grant to Develop Alternative Method for Cooling Atoms

The W. M. Keck Foundation has awarded scientists at The University of Texas at Austin two grants totaling $1.5 million to develop a powerful, alternative method for cooling atoms and involve more undergraduate students in using new advanced technologies for research.

16 Jul 2015

Researchers Analyze Behavior of Positronium in Particle Billiards

Collision physics can be like a game of billiards. Yet in the microscopic world, the outcome of the game is hard to predict. Fire a particle at a group of other particles, and they may scatter, combine or break apart, according to probability distributions governed by quantum mechanics. These processes can tell us about fundamental properties of matter and, if antimatter projectiles are used, also about matter-antimatter interactions.

15 Jul 2015

Fundamental Constants Being Determined with Increasing Accuracy

The fundamental constants that govern the laws of nature are being determined with increasing accuracy, according to a review paper published this week in Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data, from AIP Publishing.

15 Jul 2015

New Map of Dark Matter Distribution in the Universe

Dark matter may find it tougher to hide in our universe.
An international team of researchers has developed a new map of the distribution of dark matter in the universe using data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

15 Jul 2015

Pentaquark Particles Discovered at CERN

Today, the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has reported the discovery of a class of particles known as pentaquarks. The collaboration has submitted a paper reporting these findings to the journal Physical Review Letters.

15 Jul 2015

Researchers Recreate Quantum Tunneling Effect for Sound Waves

When a sound wave hits an obstacle and is scattered, the signal may be lost or degraded. But what if you could guide the signal around that obstacle, as if the interfering barrier didn't even exist? Recently, researchers at Nanjing University in China created a material from polyethylene membranes that does exactly that.

15 Jul 2015

Wavelike Quantum Behavior of Polariton Condensate at Room Temperature Demonstrated on Macroscopic Scale

For the first time, the wavelike behaviour of a room-temperature polariton condensate has been demonstrated in the laboratory on a macroscopic length scale. This significant development in the understanding and manipulation of quantum objects is the outcome of a collaboration between Professor Stéphane Kéna-Cohen of Polytechnique Montréal, Professor Stefan Maier and research associate Konstantinos Daskalakis of Imperial College London. Their work has been published in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.

15 Jul 2015

Minute Transistor with Single Molecule and Few Atoms Created Using Scanning Tunneling Microscope

A team of physicists from the Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik (PDI) and the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB), Germany, the NTT Basic Research Laboratories (NTT-BRL), Japan, and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), United States, has used a scanning tunneling microscope to create a minute transistor consisting of a single molecule and a small number of atoms. The observed transistor action is markedly different from the conventionally expected behavior and could be important for future device technologies as well as for fundamental studies of electron transport in molecular nanostructures. The complete findings are published in the August 2015 issue of the journal Nature Physics.

14 Jul 2015

Quantum Physics of Light Harvesting Could be a Delicate Interplay Between Vibrations and Electrons

Plants and bacteria make use of sunlight with remarkably high efficiency: nine out of ten absorbed light particles are being put to use in an ordinary bacterium. For years, it has been a pressing question of modern research whether or not effects from quantum physics are responsible for this outstanding performance of natural light harvesters.

14 Jul 2015