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Category: particle physics

Distorted honeycomb magnet edges closer to a quantum spin liquid

Neutron scattering and simulations reveal why a promising Kitaev candidate freezes into order instead of forming a quantum spin liquid.

Most magnets are predictable. Cool them down, and their tiny magnetic moments snap into place like disciplined soldiers. However, physicists have long suspected that, under the right conditions, magnetism might refuse to settle even in extreme cold.

This restless state, known as a quantum spin liquid, could unlock new kinds of particles and serve as a foundation for quantum technologies that are far more stable than today’s fragile systems.

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), researchers have now created and closely examined a new magnetic material that brings this strange possibility a little closer to reality, even if it doesn’t quite cross the finish line yet.

Modern Calculations Finally Solve 50-Year-Old Magnetic Mystery in Steel

Researchers at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering within The Grainger College of Engineering have identified the first detailed physical mechanism explaining how magnetic fields slow the movement of carbon atoms inside iron. The study, published in Physical Review Letters, sheds new light on the role carbon plays in shaping the internal grain structure of steel.

Steel, which is made from iron and carbon, is among the most widely used construction materials worldwide. Producing steel with specific internal structures typically requires extreme heat, making the process highly energy intensive.

Decades ago, researchers observed that exposing certain steels to magnetic fields during heat treatment led to improved performance, but the explanations offered at the time remained largely theoretical. Pinpointing the underlying cause of this effect could give engineers more precise control over heat treatment, leading to more efficient processing and lower energy demands.

SPHEREx Images and a New Anomaly Regarding the Gas Plume Around 3I/ATLAS After Perihelion

A new paper led by Carey Lisse (accessible here) reports large-scale images of the gas plume around the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS after perihelion, based on data collected last month by the SPHEREx space observatory. The data show enhanced mass loss of dust and gas around 3I/ATLAS.

The new images of 3I/ATLAS were taken in the wavelength range of 0.75–5.0 microns between the 8 and 15 of December, 2025. Each image spans 30,000 kilometers on a side. On these large scales, the brightness maps of dust and organics were found to be pear-shaped, with an anti-tail elongation in the direction of the Sun. All six other gas plumes were found to be nearly round. The major gas species were identified as: cyanide (CN, at a wavelength of 0.93 microns), water (H2O, in the wavelength range of 2.7–2.8 microns), Organics (C-H, between 3.2–3.6 microns), carbon-dioxide (CO2, 4.2–4.3 microns), and carbon-monoxide (CO, 4.7–4.8 microns). The CO2 gas-plume continues to extend out to a few hundreds of thousands of kilometers. The dust spectrum can be described as the sum of scattered sunlight and thermal emission.

Most notably, the signature of sub-micron dust particles that would have enhanced the blue color via Rayleigh scattering are absent. Moreover, these small particles would have also been subjected to a strong solar radiation-pressure and would have formed the standard cometary tail, extending away from the Sun — which is not observed — as I argued in an essay, posted here on December 25, 2026.

Magnetic fields slow carbon migration in iron by altering energy barriers, study shows

Professor Dallas Trinkle and colleagues have provided the first quantitative explanation for how magnetic fields slow carbon atom movement through iron, a phenomenon first observed in the 1970s but never fully understood. Published in Physical Review Letters, their computer simulations reveal that magnetic field alignment changes the energy barriers between atomic “cages,” offering potential pathways to reduce the energy costs and CO2 emissions associated with steel processing.

An alloy of iron and carbon, steel is one of the most-used building materials on the planet. Engineering its microstructure requires high temperatures; as a result, most steel processing consumes significant energy. In the 1970s, scientists noted that some steels exhibited better properties when heat treated under a magnetic field—but their ideas explaining this behavior were only conceptual. Understanding the mechanism behind this phenomenon could improve engineers’ ability to control heat treatment, improving material processing and potentially lowering energy costs.

“The previous explanations for this behavior were phenomenological at best,” said Trinkle, the Ivan Racheff Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and the senior author of the paper. “When you’re designing a material, you need to be able to say, ‘If I add this element, this is how (the material) will change.’ And we had no understanding of how this was happening; there was nothing predictive about it.”

Imaging technique captures ultrafast electron and atom dynamics in chemical reactions

During chemical reactions, atoms in the reacting substances break their bonds and re-arrange, forming different chemical products. This process entails the movement of both electrons (i.e., negatively charged particles) and nuclei (i.e., the positively charged central parts of atoms). Valence electrons are shared and re-arranged between different atoms, creating new bonds.

The movements of electrons and nuclei during chemical reactions are incredibly fast, in many cases only lasting millionths of a billionth of a second (i.e., femtoseconds). Yet reliably tracking and understanding these movements could help to shed new light on how specific molecules are formed, as well as on the underpinnings of quantum mechanical phenomena.

Researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University recently introduced a new approach to observe chemical reactions as they unfold, precisely tracking the movement of electrons and atomic nuclei as a molecule breaks apart. This strategy, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, was successfully used to image the photodissociation of ammonia (NH₃), the process in which a NH₃ molecule absorbs light and breaks down into smaller pieces.

Understanding the unusual chirality-driven anomalous Hall effect via scattering theory

A new framework for understanding the nonmonotonic temperature dependence and sign reversal of the chirality-related anomalous Hall effect in highly conductive metals has been developed by scientists at Science Tokyo. This framework provides a clear picture of the unusual temperature dependence of chirality-driven transport phenomena, forming a foundation for the rational design of next-generation spintronic devices and magnetic quantum materials.

Magnetic materials exhibit a variety of intriguing properties during their magnetization process that reflect their magnetic states and excitations. These properties are studied by applying an external magnetic field to the material, producing the magnetization curve. Magnetic metals additionally demonstrate rich behavior in transport phenomena, referring to the flow of charge, heat, or spin under the influence of magnetic fields.

However, some of these behaviors are difficult to probe using the magnetization curve. The anomalous Hall effect (AHE) is one such effect. In the AHE, when an electric current passes through a magnetic metal, a voltage perpendicular to the current arises even in the absence of an external magnetic field. By contrast, in the traditional Hall effect, such a transverse voltage appears only when an external magnetic field is applied.

Honeycomb lattice sweetens quantum materials development

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are pioneering the design and synthesis of quantum materials, which are central to discovery science involving synergies with quantum computation. These innovative materials, including magnetic compounds with honeycomb-patterned lattices, have the potential to host states of matter with exotic behavior.

Using theory, experimentation and computation, scientists synthesized a magnetic honeycomb of potassium cobalt arsenate and conducted the most detailed characterization of the material to date. They discovered that its honeycomb structure is slightly distorted, causing magnetic spins of charged cobalt atoms to strongly couple and align.

Tuning these interactions, such as through chemically modifying the material or applying a large magnetic field, may enable the formation of a state of matter known as a quantum spin liquid. Unlike permanent magnets, in which spins align fixedly, quantum spins do not freeze in one magnetic state.

X-ray four-wave mixing captures elusive electron interactions inside atoms and molecules

Scientists at the X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL have realized a long-pursued experimental goal in physics: to show how electrons dance together. The technique, known as X-ray four-wave mixing, opens a new way to see how energy and information flow within atoms and molecules. In the future, it could illuminate how quantum information is stored and lost, eventually aiding the design of more error-tolerant quantum devices. The findings are reported in Nature.

Much of the behavior of matter arises not from electrons acting alone, but from the ways they influence each other. From chemical systems to advanced materials, their interactions shape how molecules rearrange, how materials conduct or insulate and how energy flows.

In many quantum technologies —not least quantum computing—information is stored in delicate patterns of these interactions, known as coherences. When these coherences are lost, information disappears—a process known as decoherence. Learning how to understand and ultimately control such fleeting states is one of the major challenges facing quantum technologies today.

A Strange State of Matter Behaves Very Differently Under Even Weak Magnetism

An Auburn University study finds that magnetic fields can guide electrons in plasma much like traffic signals, giving researchers new ways to control how dust particles form. Picture a glowing cloud that looks like a neon sign, except it holds countless microscopic dust particles suspended in spa

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