University of Delaware’s Swati Singh is among a small group of researchers across the dark matter community that have begun to wonder if they are looking for the right type of dark matter. Singh, Jack Manley, a UD doctoral student, and collaborators at the University of Arizona and Haverford College, have proposed a new way to look for the particles that might make up dark matter by repurposing existing tabletop sensor technology.
When light hits certain molecules, it dislodges electrons and creates areas of positive and negative charge. An X-ray free-electron laser study has directly observed how this charge transfer affects a molecule's structure for the first time.
A pair of Mayo Clinic studies shed light on something that is typically difficult to see with the eye: respiratory aerosols. Such aerosol particles of varying sizes are a common component of breath, and they are a typical mode of transmission for respiratory viruses like COVID-19 to spread to other people and surfaces.
The discovery that the nebulae surrounding the most powerful pulsars are pumping out ultra-high-energy gamma rays could rewrite the book about the rays’ galactic origins. Pulsars are rapidly rotating, highly magnetized collapsed stars surrounded by nebulae powered by winds generated inside the pulsars.
Dan Melconian is developing new techniques and new equipment to test our current theory of electroweak interactions. Comparison of these precision measurements to theoretical predictions will either confirm the Standard Model to a higher degree or point to a New Standard Model.
The aerosol particles that serve as seeds for cloud formation are major drivers of global climate change. However, the sources and chemical processes behind the formation of these particles are unclear. Researchers have now found that carbon-based compounds from natural biological sources drive the formation of new particles. These sources play key roles in producing the large number of small particles in the atmosphere above the Amazon rainforest.
An international team has performed one of the world’s most sensitive laboratory searches for a hypothetical subatomic particle called the “sterile neutrino.” The novel experiment uses radioactive beryllium-7 atoms created at the TRIUMF facility in Canada. The research team then implants these atoms into sensitive superconductors cooled to near absolute-zero.
The first result from the Muon g-2 experiment points to the existence of undiscovered particles or forces. These findings could have major implications for future particle physics experiments and could lead to greater understanding of how the universe works.
Pions consist of a quark paired to an antiquark and are the lightest particles to experience the strong force. But until recently scientists did not understand pions’ internal structure because of their short lifespan. Now, an advance in supercomputer calculations using lattice Quantum Chromodynamics may allow scientists to provide an accurate and precise description of pion structure for the first time.
Swansea University physicists, as leading members of the ALPHA collaboration at CERN, have demonstrated laser cooling of antihydrogen atoms for the first time.
A new project at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility will use a quantum simulator to model experiments at the Electron-Ion Collider. This device uses quantum computing to simulate carefully crafted models of experiments that are being proposed for the collider.
Imperial physicists are part of a team that has announced 'intriguing' results that potentially cannot be explained by our current laws of nature.
Particle physicists are at the forefront for pioneering low-cost, mass-producible ventilators to help address the worldwide shortage. An international, interdisciplinary team spearheaded one such effort and presents the design in Physics of Fluids. The ventilator consists of a gas inlet valve and a gas outlet valve, with controls and alarms to ensure proper monitoring and customizability from patient to patient. The design is built from readily available parts and is presented under an open license.
Lena Funcke, a theoretical physicist who conducts research at the intersection of fundamental particles, the cosmos, and quantum computing, has been named a recipient of the Leona Woods Distinguished Postdoctoral Lectureship Award by the Physics Department at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
he U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $18 million in new funding to advance particle accelerator technology, a critical tool for discovery sciences and optimizing the way we treat medical patients, manufacture electronics and clean energy technologies, and defend the nation against security threats.
What do you need to study the fine details of the building blocks of matter? A new kind of particle accelerator called an Electron-Ion Collider, planned to be built in the United States over the next decade, and a state-of-the-art detector to capture the action when electrons and ions collide.
A team of scientists at the Center for Bright Beams (CBB) – a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center led by Cornell University – are working on the next generation of superconducting materials that will greatly reduce the costs associated with operating large particle accelerators and lessen their environmental impact.
Normally, electron antineutrino would zip right through the Earth at the speed of light as if it weren’t even there. But this particle just so happened to smash into an electron deep inside the South Pole’s glacial ice, and was caught by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. This enabled IceCube to make the first ever detection of a Glashow resonance event, a phenomenon predicted 60 years ago by Nobel laureate physicist Sheldon Glashow.
With this detection, scientists provided another confirmation of the Standard Model of particle physics. It also further demonstrated the ability of IceCube, which detects nearly massless particles called neutrinos using thousands of sensors embedded in the Antarctic ice, to do fundamental physics. The result was published March 10 in Nature.
Scientists can now study the strong force with a novel method of accessing the space between protons and neutrons within a nucleus. The first direct probes have tested the validity of leading theories that describe the interactions between protons and neutrons in nuclei. This research confirms that current theoretical models describe the behavior of protons and neutrons quite well.
In principle, the universe should contain objects composed only of gluons in a sea of quark-antiquark pairs. However, scientists’ experiments have never definitively confirmed these hypothetical objects, called “glueballs.” Now, scientists are using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider to search for signs of these glueballs.
In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have demonstrated a new material that has an excellent balance of parameters needed to generate a good accelerator beam.
A Fermilab team has completed tests for a crucial superconducting segment for the PIP-II particle accelerator, the future heart of the Fermilab accelerator chain. The segment, called a cryomodule, will be one of many, but this is the first to be fully designed, assembled and tested at Fermilab. It represents a journey of technical challenges and opportunities for innovation in superconducting accelerator technology.
The results of a new experiment could shift research of the proton by reviving previously discarded theories of its inner workings.
The prodigious amount of data produced at the Large Hadron Collider presents a major challenge for data analysis. Coffea, a Python package developed by Fermilab researchers, speeds up computation and helps scientists work more efficiently. Around a dozen international LHC research groups now use Coffea, which draws on big data techniques used outside physics.
Berkeley Lab researchers participated in a study that used machine learning to scan for new particles in three years of particle-collision data from CERN’s ATLAS detector.
A major injector upgrade at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility was well underway early last year when the pandemic hit, throwing scientists and their long-anticipated project for a loop. Literally overnight, they had to leave their desks, control room and colleagues behind and rapidly learn how to work together from the confines of their own homes.
A physicist making great advances in particle detector technology, Estrada is recognized by the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields for his creation and development of novel applications for CCD technology that probe wide-ranging areas of particle physics, including cosmology, dark matter searches, neutrino detection and quantum imaging.
Scientists have used cutting-edge research in quantum computation and quantum technology to pioneer a radical new approach to determining how our Universe works at its most fundamental level.
Iowa State high-energy physicists Chunhui Chen, Jim Cochran and Soeren Prell have moved their research from the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to the Belle II experiment in Japan. It's a chance to search for new physics at the intensity frontier of more and more particle collisions.
PNNL's Jan Strube and colleagues from Germany and Japan outline the future of particle physics research using linear colliders, which could improve our understanding of dark matter and help answer fundamental questions about the universe.
Fermilab scientist and University of Chicago professor of astronomy and astrophysics Craig Hogan gives perspective on how the Holometer program aimed at a tiny scale — the Planck length — to help answer one of the universe’s most basic questions: Why does everything appear to happen at definite times and places? He contextualizes the results and offers optimism for future researchers.
A team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) used a quantum computer to successfully simulate an aspect of particle collisions that is typically neglected in high-energy physics experiments, such as those that occur at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
The U.S. DOE has given the U.S. High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider Accelerator Upgrade Project approval to move full-speed-ahead in building and delivering components for the HL-LHC, specifically, cutting-edge magnets and accelerator cavities that will enable more rapid-fire collisions at the collider.
Well-known and appreciated by the scientific community for his work on beam physics and supercolliders, Shiltsev joins an organization whose membership included Marie Curie, Albert Einstein and Luigi Galvani.
Using the nation's fastest supercomputer, Summit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a team of nuclear physicists developed a promising method for measuring quark interactions in hadrons and applied the method to simulations using quarks with close-to-physical masses.
The COHERENT particle physics experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has firmly established the existence of a new kind of neutrino interaction.
The broad introduction of particle filters reduced the emission of combustion generated fine and ultrafine particles significantly. As a result, brake disc and tire abrasion are moving into the focus of public health experts and engineers, given their health harming potential. There is still a major challenge, though: How can the quantity and size of brake dust particles be measured correctly? Empa researchers are currently developing a sophisticated method.
Researchers have established a quantitative understanding of how nano-sized dipole particles assemble and crystalize. The driving force is the weak long-range attractive interaction between the dipoles that aligns the crystal faces of the particles prior to their collision. Stronger attractive forces then drive the final jump to connect the particles.
Artificial intelligence is a game-changer in nuclear physics, able to enhance and accelerate fundamental research and analysis by orders of magnitude. DOE's Jefferson Lab is exploring the expanding synergy between nuclear physics and computer science as it co-hosts together with The Catholic University of America and the University of Maryland a virtual weeklong series of lectures and hands-on exercises Jan. 11-15 for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and even “absolute beginners.”
Fermilab scientists and engineers are developing a machine learning platform to help run Fermilab’s accelerator complex alongside a fast-response machine learning application for accelerating particle beams. The programs will work in tandem to boost efficiency and energy conservation in Fermilab accelerators.
When Kawtar Hafidi first started researching the structure of the proton, other scientists told her the project she proposed was impossible. Now she and the scientists she’s trained are pursuing the next generation of that “impossible” experiment.
With all the remarkable changes and challenges that took place in 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory had a banner year in science.
Operators of Jefferson Lab's primary particle accelerator are getting a new tool to help them quickly address issues that can prevent it from running smoothly. The machine learning system has passed its first two-week test, correctly identifying glitchy accelerator components and the type of glitches they’re experiencing in near-real-time. An analysis of the results of the first field test of the custom-built machine learning system was recently published in the journal Physical Review Accelerators and Beams.
The MOLLER experiment at DOE’s Jefferson Lab is one step closer to carrying out an experiment to gain new insight into the forces at work inside the heart of matter through probes of the humble electron. The experiment has just received a designation of Critical Decision 1, or CD-1, from the DOE, which is a greenlight to move forward in design and prototyping of equipment.
Neighboring isotopes of the heaviest elements often have very similar properties. To differentiate these isotopes by their differing masses, scientists use a device called FIONA (For the Identification of Nuclide A) to measure the masses of heavy-element isotopes. For the first time, scientists have used FIONA to discover a new heavy-element isotope, mendelevium-244.
Hadronization occurs when particles called quarks and gluons combine to form hadrons, composite subatomic particles made of two or three quarks. Once combined, quarks and gluons are “confined,” or trapped, in hadrons. Researchers studying particles containing heavy “charm” quarks have found that there are many more three-quark hadrons than expected under a widely accepted explanation of how hadrons can form.
From quantum computing to facemask filtering, the Office of Science supported a variety of research in 2020.
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