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Archive for the ‘particle physics’ category: Page 446

Mar 27, 2019

Physicists measure quantum tunneling time to be near-instantaneous

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

If you throw a ball at a wall, it’s going to bounce back at you – that’s classical physics at work. But of course, the world of quantum physics is much spookier, so if you did the same with a particle, there’s a chance that it will suddenly appear on the other side. This is thanks to a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, and now a team of physicists has measured just how long that process takes.

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Mar 27, 2019

Higgs Boson in Plain English, and Why it’s So Important

Posted by in category: particle physics

Scientists at CERN have today announced that they’re 99.99% sure that they’ve found a new sub-atomic particle, and that it is likely to be the elusive Higgs boson – often referred to as the “God Particle”. That’s all well and good, but what does it all mean? Let’s break it down…

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Mar 27, 2019

This 3D Quantum Gas Clock Could Redefine Time

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics, quantum physics

Time may be a human construct but that hasn’t stopped physicists from perfecting it.

JILA’s 3D Quantum Gas Atomic Clock Offers New Dimensions in Measurement
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/10/jilas-3-D-quan…easurement
“JILA physicists have created an entirely new design for an atomic clock, in which strontium atoms are packed into a tiny three-dimensional (3D) cube at 1,000 times the density of previous one-dimensional (1-D) clocks. In doing so, they are the first to harness the ultra-controlled behavior of a so-called “quantum gas” to make a practical measurement device.”

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Mar 27, 2019

The Geometry of Particle Physics: Garrett Lisi at TEDxMaui 2013

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

About the Presenter:
After getting his Ph.D. in physics from UC San Diego, Garrett moved to Maui, seeking an optimum balance between surfing and his theoretical research. While pursuing an unanswered question at the heart of Quantum Field Theory, he began to develop what he called “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” which proposed a unified field theory combining particle physics and Albert Einstein’s theory of gravitation. His story and work have been featured at TED, in Outside Magazine, The New Yorker, Surfer, and recently in Scientific American.

#FQXiVideoContest2014

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Mar 27, 2019

Could Black Holes Made Of Light Power Our Spaceships?

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics, quantum physics, space travel

What exactly would it take to create our very own Swartzchild Kugelblitz?

Could a Dyson Sphere Harness the Full Power of the Sun? — https://youtu.be/jOHMQbffrt4

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Mar 26, 2019

Physicists discover new class of pentaquarks

Posted by in category: particle physics

Tomasz Skwarnicki, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University, has uncovered new information about a class of particles called pentaquarks. His findings could lead to a new understanding of the structure of matter in the universe.

Assisted by Liming Zhang, an associate professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Skwarnicki has analyzed data from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland. The experimental physicist has uncovered evidence of three never-before-seen pentaquarks, each divided into two parts.

“Until now, we had thought that a pentaquark was made up of five [called quarks], stuck together. Our findings prove otherwise,” says Skwarnicki, a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

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Mar 25, 2019

Extremely accurate measurements of atom states for quantum computing

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics

A new method allows the quantum state of atomic “qubits”—the basic unit of information in quantum computers—to be measured with twenty times less error than was previously possible, without losing any atoms. Accurately measuring qubit states, which are analogous to the one or zero states of bits in traditional computing, is a vital step in the development of quantum computers. A paper describing the method by researchers at Penn State appears March 25, 2019 in the journal Nature Physics.

“We are working to develop a quantum computer that uses a three-dimensional array of laser-cooled and trapped as qubits,” said David Weiss, professor of physics at Penn State and the leader of the research team. “Because of how works, the atomic qubits can exist in a ‘superposition’ of two states, which means they can be, in a sense, in both states simultaneously. To read out the result of a quantum computation, it is necessary to perform a measurement on each atom. Each measurement finds each atom in only one of its two possible states. The relative probability of the two results depends on the superposition state before the measurement.”

To measure qubit states, the team first uses lasers to cool and trap about 160 atoms in a three-dimensional lattice with X, Y, and Z axes. Initially, the lasers trap all of the atoms identically, regardless of their quantum state. The researchers then rotate the polarization of one of the laser beams that creates the X lattice, which spatially shifts atoms in one qubit state to the left and atoms in the other qubit state to the right. If an atom starts in a superposition of the two qubit states, it ends up in a superposition of having moved to the left and having moved to the right. They then switch to an X lattice with a smaller lattice spacing, which tightly traps the atoms in their new superposition of shifted positions. When light is then scattered from each atom to observe where it is, each atom is either found shifted left or shifted right, with a probability that depends on its initial state.

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Mar 23, 2019

LHCb discovers matter-antimatter asymmetry in charm quarks

Posted by in category: particle physics

A new observation by the LHCb experiment finds that charm quarks behave differently than their antiparticle counterparts.

The Beacon-News

The Proton Improvement Plan II, known as PIP-II, is a brand new leading-edge superconducting linear accelerator.

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Mar 23, 2019

In a new quantum simulator, light behaves like a magnet

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics

Physicists at EPFL propose a new “quantum simulator”: a laser-based device that can be used to study a wide range of quantum systems. Studying it, the researchers have found that photons can behave like magnetic dipoles at temperatures close to absolute zero, following the laws of quantum mechanics. The simple simulator can be used to better understand the properties of complex materials under such extreme conditions.

When subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, systems made of many interacting particles can display behaviour so complex that its quantitative description defies the capabilities of the most powerful computers in the world. In 1981, the visionary physicist Richard Feynman argued we can simulate such complex behavior using an artificial apparatus governed by the very same quantum laws – what has come to be known as a “.”

One example of a complex quantum system is that of magnets placed at really low temperatures. Close to absolute zero (−273.15 degrees Celsius), may undergo what is known as a “quantum phase transition.” Like a conventional phase transition (e.g. ice melting into water, or water evaporating into steam), the system still switches between two states, except that close to the transition point the system manifests quantum entanglement – the most profound feature predicted by . Studying this phenomenon in real materials is an astoundingly challenging task for .

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Mar 22, 2019

CERN Just Got Closer to Figuring Out Why Antimatter Hasn’t Annihilated Everything

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

Why do we exist? This is arguably the most profound question there is and one that may seem completely outside the scope of particle physics.

But our new experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has taken us a step closer to figuring it out.

To understand why, let’s go back in time some 13.8 billion years to the Big Bang. This event produced equal amounts of the matter you are made of and something called antimatter.

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