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Physics and Matter News - December 2009 Archives
 | The new caesium fountain clock CSF2 is admitted into the exclusive international club of primary clocks. ...> Full Article |
Waukesha Electric Systems, SuperPower, University of Houston, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Southern California Edison are partnering in a $10.7 million smart grid demonstration project award announced by US Department of Energy.
...> Full Article
 | Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used. ...> Full Article |
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have proposed a new paradigm that should allow scientists to observe quantum behavior in small mechanical systems.
Their ideas, described in the latest online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer a new means of addressing one of the most fascinating issues in quantum mechanics: the nature of quantum superposition and entanglement in progressively larger and more complex systems.
...> Full Article
 | Duke University engineers have created a new generation of lens that could greatly improve the capabilities of telecommunications or radar systems to provide a wide field of view and greater detail. ...> Full Article |
 | Techniques recently invented by researchers at the California Institute of Technology -- which allow the real-time, real-space visualization of fleeting changes in the structure of nanoscale matter -- have been used to image the evanescent electrical fields produced by the interaction of electrons and photons, and to track changes in atomic-scale structures. Papers describing the novel technologies appear in the December 17 issue of Nature and the October 30 issue of Science.
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 | Solitary waves that run a long distance without losing shape or dying out are called solitons. Theoreticians at the Joint Quantum Institute, a collaboration of NIST and the University of Maryland, and their colleagues in India and George Mason University, now believe there may be a new kind of soliton that's expected to be found in certain types of ultracold gases. The new soliton may provide insights into other physical systems, including the early universe. ...> Full Article |
University of Toronto quantum optics researchers Sajeev John and Xun Ma have discovered new behaviors of light within photonic crystals that could lead to faster optical information processing and compact computers that don't overheat.
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 | The first paper on proton collisions in the CERN Large Hadron Collider -- designed to provide the highest energy ever explored with particle accelerators -- is published online this week in Springer's European Physical Journal C. In November 2009, during the early commissioning of the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) LHC two counter-rotating proton bunches were circulated concurrently for the first time in the machine. ...> Full Article |
 | Researchers from NIST and the Naval Research Laboratory have developed a new way to introduce magnetic impurities in a semiconductor crystal, a technique that will enable researchers to selectively implant atoms in a crystal one at a time to learn about its electrical and magnetic properties on the atomic scale. ...> Full Article |
Physicists at Queen Mary, University of London have begun looking deep into the Earth to study some of nature's weirdest particles -- neutrinos.
...> Full Article
 | Using atoms at temperatures colder than deep space, Rice University physicists have delivered overwhelming proof for a 1970 theory that was largely scoffed at when it first appeared. In a paper available online in Science, Rice's team offers experimental proof of a universal quantum mechanism that causes trios of particles to appear and reappear at higher energy levels in an infinite progression. The triplets, or trimers, form in special cases where pairs cannot. ...> Full Article |
Harnessing the power of "hot" electrons for solar energy has been held as a theoretical possibility. Now Boston College researchers report observing the hot electron effect in an ultra-thin solar cell for the first time and collecting the elusive charges, which are typically lost in less than one-trillionth of a second in traditional solar cells.
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 | University of Rochester optics professor Chunlei Guo made headlines in the past couple of years when he changed the color of everyday metals by scouring their surfaces with precise, high-intensity laser bursts. A recent discovery in Guo's lab has shown that, beyond the aesthetic opportunities in his find lie some very powerful potential uses, like diagnosing some diseases with unprecedented ease and precision. ...> Full Article |
 | Two Kent State University professors are part of a team of researchers who recently uncovered a way to pack tetrahedra, considered to be the simplest shaped regular solids with its four triangular sides, more densely than ever before. ...> Full Article |
 | Physicists have devised a thermometer that can potentially measure temperatures as low as tens of trillionths of a degree above absolute zero. ...> Full Article |
New high-energy particle research by a team working with data from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory heightens uncertainty about the exact nature of a key theoretical component of modern physics -- the massive fundamental particle, the Higgs boson. Particle collision data resulting in two leptons helped improve measurements of the mass of the heavy subatomic top quark, which bears on the Higgs, says physicist Robert Kehoe at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who led the team.
...> Full Article
Very often in science, the unexpected discovery turns out to be the most significant. Rice University Professor Junichiro Kono and his team weren't looking for a breakthrough in the transmission of terahertz signals, but there it was: a plasmonic material that would, with adjustments to its temperature and/or magnetic field, either stop a terahertz beam cold or let it pass completely.
...> Full Article
 | Researchers have created "synthetic magnetism" using a technique that will enable unprecedented experiments into quantum effects and the behavior of condensed-matter systems. It overcomes a long-standing obstacle to the goal of using precision-controlled ultracold atom ensembles to model phenomena such as the quantum Hall effect. ...> Full Article |
Northwestern University researchers have achieved a breakthrough in quantum cascade laser output power, delivering 120 watts from a single device at room temperature.
...> Full Article
 | Antennas aren't just for listening to the radio anymore. They're used in everything from cell phones to GPS devices. Research from North Carolina State University is revolutionizing the field of antenna design -- creating shape-shifting antennas that open the door to a host of new uses in fields ranging from public safety to military deployment. ...> Full Article |
An experiment has confirmed that spinons, particle-like magnetic excitations, can be confined in a magnetic insulator similar to the way elementary quarks are confined within individual protons and neutrons. The finding, in a well-described magnetic system, may offer new ways to explore quantum chromodynamics, the theory that describes the fundamental interactions of quarks.
...> Full Article
 | Vibrations from the environments we live and work in could be much more widely harnessed as a clean source of electricity, due to cutting-edge UK research. Known as "energy harvesting," the concept has been around for over a decade, but researchers from the University of Bristol aim to make it possible to make use of a much wider range of vibrations than is currently possible. ...> Full Article |
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