Latest Photon Stories

In a study published in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature, Dartmouth researchers describe one example of the microscopic quantum world influencing--even dominating, they say--the behavior of something in the macroscopic classical world."One major question in physics has to do with the connection between the microscopic and macroscopic worlds," said Alex Rimberg, associate professor of physics at Dartmouth College.In the microscopic world, tiny sub-atomic particles such as...

The first published scientific results from the world's most powerful hard X-ray laser, located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, show its unique ability to control the behaviors of individual electrons within simple atoms and molecules by stripping them away, one by one"”in some cases creating hollow atoms.These early results "” one published this week, the other last week "” describe in great detail how the Linac Coherent Light Source's intense pulses...

The best theory for explaining the subatomic world got its start in 1928 when theorist Paul Dirac combined quantum mechanics with special relativity to explain the behavior of the electron. The result was relativistic quantum mechanics, which became a major ingredient in quantum field theory. With a few assumptions and ad hoc adjustments, quantum field theory has proven powerful enough to form the basis of the Standard Model of particles and forces."Even so, it should be remembered that...

Experiment tests underpinnings of quantum field theory, Bose-Einstein statistics of photonsOf all the assumptions underlying quantum mechanics and the theory that describes how particles interact at the most elementary level, perhaps the most basic is that particles are either bosons or fermions. Bosons, such as the particles of light called photons, play by one set of rules; fermions, including electrons, play by another.Seven years ago, University of California, Berkeley, physicists asked a...

The remarkable ability of an electron to exist in two places at once has been controlled in the most common electronic material "“ silicon - for the first time. The research findings - published in Nature by a UK-Dutch team from the University of Surrey, UCL (University College) London, Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and the FOM Institute for Plasma Physics near Utrecht - marks a significant step towards the making of an affordable "quantum computer".According to the...

TAU scientists explore a new method for curving "Airy" light beamsWe learned in science class that light beams travel in straight lines and spread through a process known as diffraction "” and they can't go around corners. But now researchers at Tel Aviv University are investigating new applications for their recent discovery that small beams of light can indeed be bent in a laboratory setting, diffracting much less than a "regular" beam.These rays, called "Airy...

BOSTON, June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- With continued uncertainty surrounding the future of solar energy incentive subsidies, it has become increasingly clear that the levelized cost of solar electricity (LCOE) will be a critical long-term driver of solar demand and PV company profitability. "As incentive policies continue to decrease, cost is going to play a critical role in how quickly solar energy becomes a viable, widely adopted source of electricity," said Michael Rogol, CEO of PHOTON...

In the paper the authors from the Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing proposed a new model trying to explain the knee at cosmic ray spectra. The knee kept as a puzzle in cosmic ray physics for nearly half a century. The work was inspired by the recent observation of anomalous excess of electrons and positrons in cosmic rays. The work tries to explain the knee and the electron/positron excess in a single model.The...

For most people, frustration is a condition to be avoided. But for scientists studying certain "frustrated" ensembles of interacting components "“ that is, those which cannot settle into a state that minimizes each interaction "“ it may be the key to understanding a host of puzzling phenomena that affect systems from neural networks and social structures to protein folding and magnetism.Frustration has typically been extremely difficult to study because even systems with...

While the laws of physics weren't made to be broken, sometimes they need revision. A major current law has been rewritten thanks to the three-port transistor laser, developed by Milton Feng and Nick Holonyak Jr. at the University of Illinois.With the transistor laser, researchers can explore the behavior of photons, electrons and semiconductors. The device could shape the future of high-speed signal processing, integrated circuits, optical communications, supercomputing and other...