Researchers can ‘see’ crystals perform their dance moves

Wenbin Li (left) and Aditya Mohite.
Photo Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Rice University researchers already knew the atoms in perovskites react favorably to light. Now they can see precisely how those atoms move.

A breakthrough in visualization supports their efforts to squeeze every possible drop of utility out of perovskite-based materials, including solar cells, a long-standing project that only recently yielded an advance to make the devices far more durable.

A study published in Nature Physics details the first direct measurement of structural dynamics under light-induced excitation in 2D perovskites. Perovskites are layered materials that have well-ordered crystal lattices. They are highly efficient harvesters of light that are being explored for use as solar cells, photodetectors, photocatalysts, light-emitting diodes, quantum emitters and more.

“The next frontier in light-to-energy conversion devices is harvesting hot carriers,” said Rice University’s Aditya Mohite, a corresponding author of the study. “Studies have shown that hot carriers in perovskite can live up to 10-100 times longer than in classical semiconductors. However, the mechanisms and design principles for the energy transfer and how they interact with the lattice are not understood.”

New method to control electron spin paves the way for efficient quantum computers

Researchers at the University of Rochester developed a new method for manipulating information in quantum systems by controlling the spin of electrons in silicon quantum dots. Electrons in silicon experience a phenomenon called spin-valley coupling between their spin (up and down arrows) and valley states (blue and red orbitals). When researchers apply a voltage (blue glow) to electrons in silicon, they harness the spin-valley coupling effect and can manipulate the spin and valley states, controlling the electron spin.
Illustration Credit: Michael Osadciw / University of Rochester

The method, developed by Rochester scientists, overcomes the limitations of electron spin resonance.

Quantum science has the potential to revolutionize modern technology with more efficient computers, communication, and sensing devices. Challenges remain in achieving these technological goals, however, including how to precisely manipulate information in quantum systems.

In a paper published in Nature Physics, a group of researchers from the University of Rochester, including John Nichol, an associate professor of physics, outlines a new method for controlling electron spin in silicon quantum dots—tiny, nanoscale semiconductors with remarkable properties—as a way to manipulate information in a quantum system.

“The results of the study provide a promising new mechanism for coherent control of qubits based on electron spin in semiconductor quantum dots, which could pave the way for the development of a practical silicon-based quantum computer,” Nichol says.

The coupling of two quantum dots was successful for the first time

Arne Ludwig was responsible for the design and manufacture of the semiconductor structures for the experiment.
Photo Credit: RUB, Kramer

This means a big step towards the technical applicability of quantum technology, for example for arithmetic operations.

A tiny change means a big breakthrough in quantum physics: an international research team from Bochum and Copenhagen has managed to couple two quantum dots in one nanochip. After exciting a quantum point using a laser, a signal is sent out, the origin of which can no longer be related to one of the quantum points, as if both had each sent half of the signal in the form of a single photon. "At first that sounds like a little success, but this signal entanglement, which sits on a single photon, is more than the sum of its parts," says Dr. Arne Ludwig from the Chair of Solid-State Physics at the Ruhr University Bochum. “It represents a big step towards the usability of quantum technology for computer operations. "Together with researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, the Bochum team published the results in the journal Science from 27. Published January 2023.

Astronomers use novel technique to find starspots

Sunspots
Image Credit: HMI / SFLORG/ Via ESO Helioviewer

Astronomers have developed a powerful technique for identifying starspots, according to research presented this month at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, and published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Our sun is at times dotted with sunspots, cool dark regions on the stellar surface generated by strong magnetic fields, which suppress churning motions and impede the free escape of light. "On other stars, these phenomena are called starspots," said Lyra Cao, lead author of the study and a graduate student in astronomy at The Ohio State University. 

“Our study is the first to precisely characterize the spottiness of stars and use it to directly test theories of stellar magnetism,” said Cao. “This technique is so precise and broadly applicable that it can become a powerful new tool in the study of stellar physics.”

Use of the technique will soon allow Cao and her colleagues to release a catalog of starspot and magnetic field measurements for more than 700,000 stars – increasing the number of these measurements available to scientists by three orders of magnitude.

MLU physicists solve mystery of two-dimensional quasicrystal formation from metal oxides

A substructure consisting of rings of different sizes embeds itself seamlessly into a hexagonal structure
 Photo Credit: Dr. Stefan Förster

The structure of two-dimensional titanium oxide breaks up at high temperatures by adding barium; instead of regular hexagons, rings of four, seven and ten atoms are created that order periodically. A team at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) made this discovery in collaboration with researchers from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Microstructure Physics, the Université Grenoble Alpes and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, USA), thereby solving the riddle of two-dimensional quasicrystal formation from metal oxides. Their findings have been published in the renowned journal "Nature Communications".

Hexagons are frequently found in nature. The best-known example is honeycomb, but graphene or various metal oxides, such as titanium oxide, also form this structure. "Hexagons are an ideal pattern for periodic arrangements," explains Dr Stefan Förster, researcher in the Surface and Interface Physics group at MLU’s Institute of Physics. "They fit together so perfectly that there are no gaps." In 2013, this group made an astonishing discovery upon depositing an ultrathin layer containing titanium oxide and barium on a platinum substrate and heating it to around 1,000 degrees centigrade in an ultra-high vacuum. The atoms arranged themselves into triangles, squares and rhombuses that group in even larger symmetrical shapes with twelve edges. A structure with 12-fold rotational symmetry was created, instead of the expected 6-fold periodicity. According to Förster, "Quasicrystals were created that have an aperiodic structure. This structure is made of basic atomic clusters that are highly ordered, even if the systematics behind this ordering is difficult for the observer to discern." The physicists from Halle were the first worldwide to demonstrate the formation of two-dimensional quasicrystals in metal oxides. 

Thermal motions and oscillation modes determine the uptake of bacteria in cells

Photo of a membrane bubble with different oscillation modes in the background and experimental scheme in the foreground. Optical tweezers (laser focus in red) bring a thermally fluctuating particle into contact with a membrane bubble (green) until the particle is invaginated into the membrane and taken up.
Graphic Credit: AG Rohrbach

How and with what effort does a bacterium - or a virus - enter a cell and cause an infection? Researchers from Freiburg have now made an important contribution to answering this question: A team led by physicist Prof. Dr. Alexander Rohrbach and his collaborator Dr. Yareni Ayala was able to show how thermal fluctuations of a model bacterium and membrane oscillation modes of a model cell influence the energy with which the model bacteria dock and enter the membrane. The results have just been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Like a sticky piece of candy on a wobbly balloon

“To understand how a bacterium or virus enters a cell, you can imagine a sticky candy on a floppy, wobbly balloon. When a child shakes the rubber balloon around, the candy sticks even tighter to its surface,” said Rohrbach, a professor of -Bio- and Nano-Photonics at the Department of Microsystems Engineering at the University of Freiburg. In his lab, the laser and bio-physicists set up a similar experiment to study the physics of infection processes. The wobbly balloon corresponds to a giant uni-lamellar vesicle (GUV), which serves as a biological model cell. The membrane vesicle is the size of a tiny grain of sand about 20 micrometers in diameter.

Researchers combine classical and quantum optics for super-resolution imaging

A conceptual rendering of the super-resolution experiment, which will be enabled by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Illustration Credit: Courtesy of Colorado State University

The ability to see invisible structures in our bodies, like the inner workings of cells, or the aggregation of proteins, depends on the quality of one’s microscope. Ever since the first optical microscopes were invented in the 17th century, scientists have pushed for new ways to see things more clearly, at smaller scales and deeper depths.   

Randy Bartels, professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Colorado State University, is one of those scientists. He and a team of researchers at CSU and Colorado School of Mines are on a quest to invent some of the world’s most powerful light microscopes – ones that can resolve large swaths of biological material in unimaginable detail.   

The name of the game is super–resolution microscopy, which is any optical imaging technique that can resolve things smaller than half the wavelength of light. The discipline was the subject of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Bartels and others are in a race to keep circumventing that diffraction limit to illuminate biologically important structures inside the body.  

A Quan­tum Video Reel

Using all of images from the video reel, the team could then estimate the quantum states of the atom.
Image Credit: University of Innsbruck

When it comes to creating ever more intriguing quantum systems, a constant need is finding new ways to observe them in a wide range of physical scenarios.  JILA Fellow Cindy Regal and JILA and NIST Fellow Ana Maria Rey have teamed up with Oriol Romero-Isart from the University of Innsbruck and IQOQI to show that a trapped particle in the form of an atom readily reveals its full quantum state with quite simple ingredients, opening up opportunities for studies of the quantum state of ever larger particles.

In the quantum realm an atom does not behave as point particle, instead it behaves more as a wave.  Its properties (e.g., its position and velocity) are described in terms of what is referred to as the wavefunction of the atom. One way to learn about the wavefunction of a particle is to let the atom fly and then capture its location with a camera. 

And with the right tricks, pictures can be taken of the particle’s quantum state from many vantage points, resulting in what is known as quantum tomography (‘tomo’ being Greek for slice or section, and ‘graphy’ meaning describing or recording).  In the work published in Nature Physics, the authors used a rubidium atom placed carefully in a specific state of its motion in a tightly focused laser beam, known as an optical tweezer.  And they were able to observe it from many vantage points by letting it evolve in the optical tweezer in time.  Like a ball rolling in a bowl, at different times the velocity and location of the particle interchange, and by snapping pictures at the right time during a video reel of the ball, many vantages of the particle’s state can be revealed.

How a 3 cm glass sphere could help scientists understand space weather

UCLA researchers effectively reproduced the type of gravity that exists on or near stars and other planets inside of a glass sphere 3 centimeters in diameter.
Photo Credit: John Koulakis/UCLA 

Solar flares and other types of space weather can wreak havoc with spaceflight and with telecommunications and other types of satellites orbiting the Earth. But, to date, scientists’ ability to research ways to overcome that challenge has been severely limited. That’s because experiments they conduct in laboratories here on Earth are affected by gravity in ways that are so different from conditions in space.

But a new study by UCLA physicists could, at last, help conquer that issue — which could be a big step toward safeguarding humans (and equipment) during space expeditions, and to ensuring the proper functioning of satellites. The paper is published in Physical Review Letters.

The UCLA researchers effectively reproduced the type of gravity that exists on or near stars and other planets inside of a glass sphere measuring 3 centimeters in diameter (about 1.2 inches). To do so, they used sound waves to create a spherical gravitational field and generate plasma convection — a process in which gas cools as it nears the surface of a body and then reheats and rises again as it nears the core — creating a fluid current that in turn generates a magnetic current.

The achievement could help scientists overcome the limiting role of gravity in experiments that are intended to model convection that occurs in stars and other planets.

Quantum researchers strike the right chord with silicides

The silicide research team. In the front from left to right: Mark Hersam, Michael Bedzyk, James Ronidnelli and Xiezeng Lu. Back: Carlos Torres and Dominic Goronzy.
Photo Credit: SQMS Center

Just as the sound of a guitar depends on its strings and the materials used for its body, the performance of a quantum computer depends on the composition of its building blocks. Arguably the most critical components are the devices that encode information in quantum computers.

One such device is the transmon qubit — a patterned chip made of metallic niobium layers on top of a substrate, such as silicon. Between the two materials resides an ultrathin layer that contains both niobium and silicon. The compounds of this layer are known as silicides (NbxSiy). Their impact on the performance of transmon qubits has not been well understood — until now.

Silicides form when elemental niobium is deposited onto silicon during the fabrication process of a transmon qubit. They need to be well understood to make devices that reliably and efficiently store quantum information for as long as possible.

Researchers at the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, have discovered how silicides impact the performance of transmon qubits. Their research has been published in APS Physical Review Materials.

A new model for dark matter

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the distribution of dark matter in the center of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 1689, containing about 1,000 galaxies and trillions of stars. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe’s mass. Hubble cannot see the dark matter directly. Astronomers inferred its location by analyzing the effect of gravitational lensing, where light from galaxies behind Abell 1689 is distorted by intervening matter within the cluster. Researchers used the observed positions of 135 lensed images of 42 background galaxies to calculate the location and amount of dark matter in the cluster. They superimposed a map of these inferred dark matter concentrations, tinted blue, on an image of the cluster taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. If the cluster’s gravity came only from the visible galaxies, the lensing distortions would be much weaker. The map reveals that the densest concentration of dark matter is in the cluster’s core. Abell 1689 resides 2.2 billion light-years from Earth. The image was taken in June 2002.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, D. Coe (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, and Space Telescope Science Institute), N. Benitez (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain), T. Broadhurst (University of the Basque Country, Spain), and H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University)

Dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics. It is clear that it must exist, because without dark matter, for example, the motion of galaxies cannot be explained. But it has never been possible to detect dark matter in an experiment.

Currently, there are many proposals for new experiments: They aim to detect dark matter directly via its scattering from the constituents of the atomic nuclei of a detection medium, i.e., protons and neutrons.

A team of researchers—Robert McGehee and Aaron Pierce of the University of Michigan and Gilly Elor of Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany—has now proposed a new candidate for dark matter: HYPER, or “HighlY Interactive ParticlE Relics.”

Removing water, stains, contaminants with hydrogel beads

Snapshots of the hydrogel bead impacting the droplet causing the droplet to lift off the surface.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Hawaiʻi

There may be a more efficient future for water repellent materials and methods thanks to new research from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Engineering. Associate Professor John S. Allen III and an international team of researchers have discovered a method to remove liquid from non-stick surfaces using hydrogel beads, a material similar to gel cap medications.

“Ever want to remove a puddle completely without touching it? How about removing staining coffee off your clothes? Do you know that all the dangerous contaminants are off the surface? All these might be facilitated with low-cost hydrogel beads in the future,” Allen explained.

For a variety of everyday and industrial waterproof/water resistant objects, it is important to reduce the contact time of an impacting water or liquid drop with the surface. Many people are familiar with water repellent coating on buildings and on clothing. Repellants are also used to mitigate icing on a plane, as bouncing droplets are less likely to have time to freeze.

Ripples in the fabric of the universe may reveal the start of time

Numerical simulation of the neutron stars merging to form a black hole, with their accretion disks interacting to produce electromagnetic waves.
Illustration Credit: L. Rezolla (AEI) & M. Koppitz (AEI & Zuse-Institut Berlin

Scientists have advanced in discovering how to use ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves to peer back to the beginning of everything we know. The researchers say they can better understand the state of the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang by learning how these ripples in the fabric of the universe flow through planets and the gas between the galaxies.

“We can’t see the early universe directly, but maybe we can see it indirectly if we look at how gravitational waves from that time have affected matter and radiation that we can observe today,” said Deepen Garg, lead author of a paper reporting the results in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. Garg is a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics, which is based at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).

Garg and his advisor Ilya Dodin, who is affiliated with both Princeton University and PPPL, adapted this technique from their research into fusion energy, the process powering the sun and stars that scientists are developing to create electricity on Earth without emitting greenhouse gases or producing long-lived radioactive waste. Fusion scientists calculate how electromagnetic waves move through plasma, the soup of electrons and atomic nuclei that fuels fusion facilities known as tokamaks and stellarators.

Ionic Liquids' Good Vibrations Change Laser Colors with Ease

Shooting a green laser through a tube filled with a particular ionic liquid (right side of photo) can easily convert the green laser light to orange (upper left)—a long-sought color for medical applications. The method can be tailored for different color shifts by choosing different ionic liquids.
Photo Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Lasers are intense beams of colored light. Depending on their color and other properties, they can scan your groceries, cut through metal, eradicate tumors, and even trigger nuclear fusion. But not every laser color is available with the right properties for a specific job. To fix that, scientists have found a variety of ways to convert one color of laser light into another. In a study just published in the journal Physical Review Applied, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory demonstrate a new color-shifting strategy that’s simple, efficient, and highly customizable.

The new method relies on interactions between the laser and vibrational energy in the chemical bonds of materials called “ionic liquids.” These liquids are made only of positively and negatively charged ions, like ordinary table salt, but they flow like viscous fluids at room temperature. Simply shining a laser through a tube filled with a particular ionic liquid can downshift the laser’s energy and change its color while retaining other important properties of the laser beam.

Coating bubbles with protein results in a highly stable contrast agent for medical use

Bacteria produce gas vesicles
Image Credit: Aalto University

Inspired by the bubbles bacteria create inside their cells, researchers developed a similar system by coating tiny gas vesicles with protein. The resulting bubbles are safe, highly stable, and function as contrast agent in medical applications. They could be used to diagnose, for example, cardiological issues, blood flow, and liver lesions.

Bacteria produce gas vesicles, tiny thin-walled sacs filled with air or fluid, to help them float. This phenomenon has captured the attention of scientists who see potential for similar bubble-based designs in fields like medicine. A team of researchers at Aalto University’s Department of Applied Physics, led by Professor Robin Ras, have now used the same idea to create a new kind of contrast agent for use in medical applications such as ultrasound imaging. The research was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Data Reveal a Surprising Preference in Particle Spin Alignment

New data show that local fluctuations in the nuclear strong force may influence the spin orientation of particles called phi mesons (made of two quarks held together by the exchange of gluons).
Illustration Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Given the choice of three different “spin” orientations, certain particles emerging from collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an atom smasher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, appear to have a preference. As described in a paper just published in Nature by RHIC’s STAR collaboration, the results reveal a preference in global spin alignment of particles called phi mesons. Conventional mechanisms—such as the magnetic field strength or the swirliness of the matter generated in the particle collisions—cannot explain the data. But a new model that includes local fluctuations in the nuclear strong force can.

“It could be that the strong force fluctuations are the missing factor. Previously we hadn’t realized the strong force can influence particle spin in this way,” said Aihong Tang, a STAR physicist at Brookhaven who was involved in the analysis.

This explanation is still subject to debate and further verification is needed, the STAR physicists say. But if it proves to be true, “these measurements give us a way to gauge how large the local fluctuations in the strong force are. They provide a new avenue to study the strong force from a different perspective,” Tang said.

Artifacts, Begone! NIST Improves Its Flagship Device for Measuring Mass

For the first time, scientists have integrated a quantum resistance standard directly into mass measurements made with the one-of-a-kind NIST-4 Kibble balance. Using the quantum standard in this way increases the accuracy of the measurements. This animation shows how the new quantum resistance standard, called QHARS, works. The QHARS device uses a sheet of graphene (a single layer of carbon atoms) attached to superconducting electrical contacts. When cooled to low temperature and placed in a strong magnetic field, electrons in the graphene begin moving in closed loops, a phenomenon known as the quantum Hall effect. This behavior results in the graphene having a specific resistance, providing an absolute reference for measuring current in the NIST-4 Kibble balance. 
Video Credit: Sean Kelley/NIST

In a brightly lit subterranean lab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) sits a room-sized electromechanical machine called the NIST-4 Kibble balance.

The instrument can already measure the mass of objects of roughly 1 kilogram, about as heavy as a quart of milk, as accurately as any device in the world. But now, NIST researchers have further improved their Kibble balance’s performance by adding to it a custom-built device that provides an exact definition of electrical resistance. The device is called the quantum Hall array resistance standard (QHARS), and it consists of a set of several smaller devices that use a quirk of quantum physics to generate extremely precise amounts of electrical resistance. The researchers describe their work in a Nature Communications paper.

Excavation of massive underground caverns for DUNE halfway complete

When complete later this year, this cavern will be around 500 feet long, 65 feet wide and 90 feet high. It will be one of three caverns that will provide space to house particle detector modules and other equipment for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
Photo Credit: David Smith, Fermilab

Deep below the surface in South Dakota, construction crews have been working tirelessly to carve out a network of caverns and tunnels that one day will house a huge neutrino experiment. Their efforts are paying off: With almost 400,000 tons of rock extracted from the earth, the excavation is now half complete.

Once finished, the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility will be the site of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. DUNE will focus on studying neutrinos, elusive particles that may hold the answers to many of the universe’s mysteries, such as why our universe is made of matter and how black holes and neutron stars are born. More than 1,000 scientists and engineers from over 30 countries are a part of LBNF/DUNE.

LBNF will provide the space, infrastructure and particle beam for DUNE, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. It includes underground caverns for a near detector at Fermilab, about 40 miles west of Chicago, and a far detector located 800 miles away at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota.

Deflecting lightning with a laser lightning rod

During tests carried out on the summit of the Säntis by Jean-Pierre Wolf and Aurélien Houard's team, the scientists noted that the discharge could follow the laser beam of the "LLR" for several dozen meters before reaching the tower of the operator Swisscom (in red and white).
Photo Credit: Xavier Ravinet - UNIGE

A European consortium led by UNIGE, École Polytechnique (Paris), EPFL, hes-so and TRUMPF has managed to guide lightning using a high-power laser installed at the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland.

Forest fires, power cuts and damaged infrastructure…lightning fascinates and destroys in equal measure, causing as many as 24,000 deaths a year worldwide not to mention widespread destruction. Even today, the lightning rod invented by Benjamin Franklin is the best form of protection. And yet, these rods do not always provide optimal protection for sensitive sites. A European consortium consisting of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), École Polytechnique (Paris), EPFL, hes-so and TRUMPF scientific lasers (Munich) has developed a promising alternative: the Laser Lightning Rod or LLR. After testing the LLR on the summit of Säntis (in Switzerland), the researchers now have proof of its feasibility. The rod can deflect lightning over several dozen meters even in poor weather. The results of this research are published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Sandia work at the heart of next generation nuclear reactor

A team of Sandia National Laboratories researchers is testing materials to make the next generation of fusion reactors. This container is used to expose the samples to nuclear fusion. It holds seven samples of innovative tungsten alloys, post exposure.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Coburn

A team of Sandia National Laboratories researchers working on the reactor at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility is testing materials to make the next generation of fusion reactors, in the quest to develop more carbon-free energy sources.

These magnetic confinement fusion reactors, called tokamaks, use magnetic fields to shape plasma into a donut shape that generates power from nuclear fusion. DIII-D is the largest such facility currently operating in the Department of Energy complex. Tokamaks create high heat and particle fluxes that can cause significant erosion of the reactor wall materials. If these materials contaminate the core plasma, it could make it impossible to bring the reactor to a temperature high enough to start stable, safe fusion.

Jonathan Coburn is one such researcher, part of a team of Sandians that collaborates with DIII-D to test and develop much needed specialized fusion materials for the hot fusion plasma environment.