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Collisions between beams of gravitons could convert the hypothesized particles into photons, producing a potentially detectable radio signal that would accompany some gravitational waves.

If gravity and quantum mechanics are to be unified, gravitational waves—usually studied as a classical phenomenon using general relativity—must comprise hypothesized particles called gravitons. In theory, gravitons can interact with each other to produce photons, but these interactions were thought to be vanishingly rare and impossible to detect. In new theoretical work, Raymond Sawyer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, finds that in certain cases, colliding gravitational waves could produce enough radio frequency photons to yield a detectable signal.

An atomically thin materials platform developed by Penn State researchers in conjunction with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Oak Ridge National Lab will open a wide range of new applications in biomolecular sensing, quantum phenomena, catalysis and nonlinear optics.

“We have leveraged our understanding of a special type of graphene, dubbed epitaxial graphene, to stabilize unique forms of atomically thin metals,” said Natalie Briggs, a doctoral candidate and co-lead author on a paper in the journal Nature Materials. “Interestingly, these atomically thin metals stabilize in structures that are completely different from their bulk versions, and thus have very interesting properties compared to what is expected in bulk metals.”

Traditionally, when metals are exposed to air they rapidly begin to oxidize—rust. In as short as one second, metal surfaces can form a rust layer that would destroy the metallic properties. In the case of a 2-D metal, this would be the entire layer. If you were to combine a metal with other 2-D materials via traditional synthesis processes, the chemical reactions during synthesis would ruin the properties of both the metal and layered material. To avoid these reactions, the team exploited a method that automatically caps the 2-D metal with a single layer of graphene while creating the 2-D metal.

Novel phenomenon occurs due to quantum tunnelling and might be exploited in future quantum information technologies.

Ideal process leaves some superposition states intact.

In the 1970s, physicists uncovered a potential symmetry that united all the kinds of particles in our universe. This connection, known as supersymmetry, relies on the strange quantum property of spin, and could help unlock a new understanding of physics.

Circa 2019

A recent experiment shows how quantum mechanics can make heat flow from a cold body to a hot one, an apparent (though not real) violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Quantum computing isn’t yet far enough along that it could have helped curb the spread of this coronavirus outbreak. But this emerging field of computing will almost certainly help scientists and researchers confront future crises.

“Can we compress the rate at which we discover, for example, a treatment or an approach to this?” asks Dario Gil, the director of IBM Research. “The goal is to do everything that we are doing today in terms of discovery of materials, chemistry, things like that, (in) factors of 10 times better, 100 times better,”

And that, he says, “could be game-changing.”

During the 1930s, venerable theoretical physicist Albert Einstein returned to the field of quantum mechanics, which his theories of relativity helped to create. Hoping to develop a more complete theory of how particles behave, Einstein was instead horrified by the prospect of quantum entanglement — something he described as “spooky action at a distance.”

Despite Einstein’s misgivings, quantum entanglement has gone on to become an accepted part of quantum mechanics. And now, for the first time ever, a team of physicists from the University of Glasgow took an image of a form of quantum entanglement (aka Bell entanglement) at work. In so doing, they managed to capture the first piece of visual evidence of a phenomenon that baffled even Einstein himself.

The paper that described their findings, titled “Imaging Bell-type nonlocal behavior,” recently appeared in the journal Science Advances. The study was led by Dr. Paul-Antoine Moreau, a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Glasgow, and included multiple researchers from Glasgow’s School of Physics & Astronomy.

Scientists believe they’ve made a concrete example of an unusual, theoretical form of ferromagnetism first described by a researcher more than 50 years ago.

Nagaoka ferromagnetism, named for the scientist who discovered it, Yosuke Nagaoka, is a special case of the same magnetic forces that make regular, refrigerator-type magnets work—ferro meaning iron, plus a few other metals that are naturally receptive to magnetism. Identifying it in real life—in this case using a quantum system of electrons—can help scientists understand how spontaneous ferromagnetism works.