Using lasers to slow down atoms is a technique that has been used for a long time already: If one wants to achieve low-temperature world records in the range of absolute temperature zero, one resorts to laser cooling, in which energy is extracted from the atoms with a suitable laser beam....

In 2018, a team of physicists at Purdue University invented a device which experimentally showed quasiparticles interfering for the first time in the fractional quantum Hall effect at filling factor v=1/3. Further development of these heterostructures has allowed the Manfra Group to expand their...

Photonic integrated circuits, or in short, PICs, utilize particles of light, better known as photons, as opposed to electrons that run in electronic integrated circuits. The main difference between the two: A photonic integrated circuit provides functions for information signals imposed on optical...

An international research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has developed a new method for the efficient coupling of terahertz waves with much shorter wavelengths, so-called spin waves. As the experts report in the journal Nature Physics, their experiments, in combination...

What is behind dark energy—and what connects it to the cosmological constant introduced by Albert Einstein? Two physicists from the University of Luxembourg point the way to answering these open questions of physics....

The second law of thermodynamics is often considered to be one of only a few physical laws that is absolutely and unquestionably true. The law states that the amount of 'entropy'—a physical property—of any closed system can never decrease. It adds an 'arrow of time' to everyday occurrences,...

When it comes to creating ever more intriguing quantum systems, a constant need is finding new ways to observe them in a wide range of physical scenarios. JILA Fellow Cindy Regal and JILA and NIST Fellow Ana Maria Rey have teamed up with Oriol Romero-Isart from the University of Innsbruck and IQOQI...

Physical systems evolve at a particular speed, which depends on various factors including the system's so-called topological structure (i.e., spatial properties that are preserved over time despite any physical changes that occur). Existing methods for determining the speed at which physical systems...

For the first time since it was proposed more than 80 years ago, scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have demonstrated the phenomenon of "quantum recoil," which describes how the particle nature of light has a major impact on electrons moving through...

A class of nonvolatile memory devices, called MRAM, based on quantum magnetic materials, can offer a thousandfold performance beyond current state-of-the-art memory devices. The materials known as antiferromagnets were previously demonstrated to store stable memory states, but were difficult to read...