The breakthrough technique supercools plasma with lasers before trapping them in a magnetic field; allowing physicists to study the northern lights, white dwarves and nuclear fusion in ever greater detail. Source: https://www.livescience.com/laser-cooled-plasma-trapped.html
Tag: laser
Scientists develop laser system that generates random numbers at ultrafast speeds
An international team of scientists has developed a system that can generate random numbers over a hundred times faster than current technologies, paving the way towards faster, cheaper, and more secure data encryption in today’s digitally connected world. …
Can air pollution help us find alien life?
To find alien life in our universe, scientists have considered searches for optical lasers or even giant energy-harvesting structures known as Dyson spheres. Now they’re suggesting a more mundane sort of search, a hunt for air pollution in exoplanet atmospheres. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/can-pollution-help-us-find-alien-life…
Investigating the wave properties of matter with vibrating molecules
The working group led by Prof. Stephan Schiller, Ph.D. from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has used a novel, high-precision laser spectroscopic experiment to measure the internal vibration of the simplest molecule. This allowed the researchers to investigate the wave character of the motion of atomic nuclei with unprecedented accuracy. They present their findings in the current edition of Nature Physics….
The search for electron-hole liquids gets warmer
An electron-hole liquid is a unique collective quantum state formation in semiconductors where free charges can condense into a droplet. These droplets have interesting uses for laser-controlled circuits based on light beams instead of wires. Unfortunately, electron-hole liquids normally only exist in extremely cold environments, and aren’t practical for real devices. But what if these droplets could instead form as the…
Electrons living on the edge
Scientists at the University of Tsukuba demonstrated the possibility of electrons moving as if they were massless when certain materials called “topological insulators” are irradiated with laser beams. This work may lead to a new class of highly efficient electronic devices and photonic crystals. …
Video: EDRS: the space data highway
The European Data Relay System, or EDRS, uses cutting-edge laser technology to greatly reduce the time it takes for information to be sent from low-Earth orbiting spacecraft—such as the Earth observing Sentinel satellites—to Earth. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-video-edrs-space-highway.html…
Bringing atoms to a standstill: Researchers miniaturize laser cooling
It’s cool to be small. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have miniaturized the optical components required to cool atoms down to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, the first step in employing them on microchips to drive a new generation of super-accurate atomic clocks, enable navigation without GPS, and simulate quantum systems. …
Researchers report role of quantum vibrations in electron transfer
Princeton Chemistry’s Scholes Group is reporting evidence that quantum vibrations participate in electron transfer, establishing with ultrafast laser spectroscopy that the vibrations provide channels through which the reaction takes place. …
Light-Based Quantum Computer Exceeds Fastest Classical Supercomputers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: For the first time, a quantum computer made from photons — particles of light — has outperformed even the fastest classical supercomputers. Physicists led by Chao-Yang Lu and Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Shanghai performed a technique called Gaussian boson sampling with their quantum…