Lifeboat Foundation

On Truth and Reality — Uniting Metaphysics, Philosophy, Physics and Theology (Science and Art) from One Thing, Absolute Space and the Spherical Standing Wave Structure of Matter. From Matter as ‘Particles’ generating ‘Fields’ in ‘Space-Time’, to Matter as Spherical Standing Waves in Space. The Wave-Center Causes ‘Particle Effect’, Wave Motion of Space Causes ‘Time’, Wave Interactions cause ‘Forces / Fields’

Not all magnets are the same. When we think of magnetism, we often think of magnets that stick to a refrigerator’s door. For these types of magnets, the electronic interactions that give rise to magnetism have been understood for around a century, since the early days of quantum mechanics. But there are many different forms of magnetism in nature, and scientists are still discovering the mechanisms that drive them.

Now, physicists from Princeton University have made a major advance in understanding a form of magnetism known as kinetic magnetism, using ultracold atoms bound in an artificial laser-built lattice. Their experiments, chronicled in a paper published in the journal Nature (“Directly imaging spin polarons in a kinetically frustrated Hubbard system”), allowed the researchers to directly image the microscopic object responsible for this magnetism, an unusual type of polaron, or quasiparticle that emerges in an interacting quantum system.

Researchers at Princeton have directly imaged the microscopic origins of a novel type of magnetism. (Image: Max Prichard, Waseem Bakr group at Princeton University)

Researchers succeeded in conducting an almost perfect quantum teleportation despite the presence of noise that usually disrupts the transfer of quantum state.

In teleportation, the state of a quantum particle, or qubit, is transferred from one location to another without sending the particle itself. This transfer requires quantum resources, such as entanglement between an additional pair of qubits. In an ideal case, the transfer and teleportation of the qubit state can be done perfectly. However, real-world systems are vulnerable to noise and disturbances — and this reduces and limits the quality of the teleportation.

Advancements in Noise-Resilient Teleportation.

In the 1880s Heinrich Hertz discovered that a spark jumping between two pieces of metal emits a flash of light – rapidly oscillating electromagnetic waves – which can be picked up by an antenna. To honour his groundbreaking work, the unit of frequency was named “Hertz” in 1930. Hertz’s findings were later used by Guglielmo Marconi (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1909) to transmit information over long distances creating radiocommunication and revolutionizing wireless telegraphy – shaping the modern world until today.

Scientists from the Department of Physics and the Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy (RUN), University of Regensburg, have now been able to directly observe a quantum version of Hertz’s spark jumping between just two atoms by measuring the oscillogram of the light it emits with temporal precision faster than a single oscillation cycle of the lightwave. This new signal enabled achieving a long-sought goal: atomic spatial resolution in all-optical microscopy.

As an unprecedented communication channel with the quantum world, this signal could be crucial for the development of super-fast quantum technologies as it gives new insights into the processes happening on lengthscales of single atoms and timescales faster than a trillionth of a second.

The paper is published in the journal Physical Review X.

In the world of quantum computing and quantum simulation technology, there is a fundamental challenge when using neutral atoms: The lifetime of Rydberg atoms, which are the building blocks for quantum computing, is limited. But there is a promising solution: circular Rydberg states.

For the first time, the research team has succeeded in generating and capturing circular Rydberg atoms of an alkaline-earth metal in an array of optical tweezers.

We discuss a perturbative and non-instantaneous reheating model, adopting a generic post-inflationary scenario with an equation of state w. In particular, we explore the Higgs boson-induced reheating, assuming that it is achieved through a cubic inflaton-Higgs coupling ϕ|H|2. In the presence of such coupling, the Higgs doublet acquires a ϕ-dependent mass and a non-trivial vacuum–expectation–value that oscillates in time and breaks the Standard Model gauge symmetry. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the non-standard cosmologies and the inflaton-induced mass of the Higgs field modify the radiation production during the reheating period. This, in turn, affects the evolution of a thermal bath temperature, which has remarkable consequences for the ultraviolet freeze-in dark matter production.

In this study, graduate student Keito Kobayashi and Professor Shunsuke Fukami from Tohoku University, along with Dr. Kerem Camsari from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and their colleagues, developed a near-future heterogeneous version of a probabilistic computer tailored for executing probabilistic algorithms and facile manufacturing.

“Our constructed prototype demonstrated that excellent computational performance can be achieved by driving pseudo random number generators in a deterministic CMOS circuit with physical random numbers generated by a limited number of stochastic nanomagnets,” says Fukami. “Specifically speaking, a limited number of probabilistic bits (p-bits) with a stochastic magnetic tunnel junction (s-MTJ), should be manufacturable with a near-future integration technology.”

The researchers also clarified that the final form of the spintronics probabilistic computer, primarily composed of s-MTJs, will yield a four-order-of-magnitude reduction in area and a three-order-of-magnitude reduction in energy consumption compared to the current CMOS circuits when running probabilistic algorithms.

A research team led by Dr. Serge Krasnokutski from the Astrophysics Laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy at the University of Jena had already demonstrated that simple peptides can form on cosmic dust particles. However, it was previously assumed that this would not be possible if molecular ice, which covers the dust particle, contains water—which is usually the case.

Now the team, in collaboration with the University of Poitiers, France, has discovered that the presence of water molecules is not a major obstacle for the formation of peptides on such dust particles. The researchers report on their finding in the journal Science Advances.

Chemistry in the icy vacuum “We have replicated conditions similar to those in outer space in a vacuum chamber, also adding substances that occur in so-called molecular clouds,” explains Krasnokutski. These substances include ammonia, atomic carbon, and carbon monoxide. “Thus, all the chemical elements needed for simple peptides are present,” adds the physicist.

Earth’s magnetic field plays a key role in making our planet habitable. The protective bubble over the atmosphere shields the planet from solar radiation, winds, cosmic rays and wild swings in temperature.

However, Earth’s magnetic field almost collapsed 591 million years ago, and this change, paradoxically, may have played a pivotal role in the blossoming of complex life, new research has found.

“In general, the field is protective. If we had not had a field early in Earth history water would have been stripped from the planet by the solar wind (a stream of energized particles flowing from the sun toward Earth),” said John Tarduno, a professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester in New York and senior author of the new study.