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Physics Update
Providing concise yet thorough accounts of research papers from journals devoted to physics and the physical sciences. The department’s items are written and selected by Physics Today staff. After publication online, some of the department’s items appear later in the print issue.
Gravity waves perturb the Martian atmosphere's thermal structure
Icy clouds of carbon dioxide that float in the Martian atmosphere can form thanks to the cooling effect of gravity waves.
A self-assembled nanopattern with near-perfect order
Its features are smaller than can be achieved with conventional photolithography.
Criegee chemistry captured
An elusive but atmospherically important molecule yields to kinetic measurement for the first time.
Microlensing search for planets
The Milky Way seems to have more planets than stars
A blind quantum computer’s laboratory debut
Quantum computing promises greater efficiency than classical computing. Quantum communication promises tamper-proof security. Combine the two and you get blind quantum computing.
Frequency-doubled photons can measure current density
The possibility was anticipated theoretically 16 years ago and could be used in applications as a semiconductor diagnostic.
New insights into droplet collisions
The performance of diesel and rocket engines may be improved by exploiting size differences in droplets.
The Arctic gyre spins up to store fresh water
Anticyclonic winds in the Arctic are whipping up a vast reservoir of fresh water that could dissipate if the winds' rotation reverses.
Surface-healing nanoparticles find their target
Transported by specially designed microcapsules, the particles exit only when they arrive at a crack in a damaged material.
Optical-fiber microcavities reach angstrom-scale precision
Locally heating a glass fiber is a surprisingly simple way to create and tune a microresonator.
Hints of the Higgs heighten anticipation
There’s less and less room for particle theory’s long-sought capstone to hide.
Multiple exciton generation
Solar cells based on semiconductor nanocrystals can produce more than one electron–hole pair per incoming photon.
Crevasses may make ice shelves more stable
Periodic arrangements of crevasses produce a bandgap that can prevent flexing in the shelf interior.
A new suitor in the carbon-14 dating game
A tabletop optical system can measure parts per quadrillion traces of the rare carbon isotope.
Tethered proteins speed up photosynthetic electron transfer
The photosynthetic system of an ocean-dwelling bacterium has been wired to allow electrons to quantum mechanically tunnel, rather than diffuse, between its reacting protein species.
Ocean acidification and coral reefs
As the world's oceans continue to absorb atmospheric CO2, the resulting changes could adversely affect coral reefs.
A device-friendly qubit?
Silicon carbide, a material that’s already widely used for electronics, may also be suitable for quantum computation.
Molding many-faced particles
A recently developed technique for mass-producing nanoparticles shows its versatility.
First glimpse of primordial matter
Absorption spectra reveal intergalactic clouds with no elements that require a stellar furnace.
Building ultralight lattices
Using a new method, researchers have produced the lowest-density material ever made.
Wrinkled roaches and flapping flags
The ever-present oblique waves in a flapping flag are primarily responsible for the lift force that offsets the pull of gravity.
Measuring morphological change
Two new algorithms automate a process that used to rely on expert assessments.
Silicon meets the butterfly wing
Inspired by the nanostructures in the wing of a male Papilio ulysses, researchers have made a silicon wafer that both repels water and strongly absorbs light.
A marriage of microscopy and image compression
Instead of looking at a surface pixel by pixel, a new microscope takes a more global view to achieve improved resolution.
Monitoring surface diffusion, one molecule at a time
The symmetry of a molecule affects its adsorption and movement atop an insulator.
Negative ions of molecular hydrogen
The long-standing puzzle of how a hydrogen molecule can hold on to an extra electron for so long has finally been experimentally resolved.
A handheld optical device for image-guided surgery
Near IR lasers, fluorescently tagged nanoparticles, and tomographic reconstruction form the basis of a prototype device that could help surgeons locate and excise tumors.
Aligning scattered light for pain-free diagnostics
A new spectroscopic design that alters the geometry of a key optical element advances the development of a portable noninvasive glucose monitor.
Faking entanglement
Bell’s inequalities are the quintessential test of a system’s nonlocality. But experiments show that the test can be fooled—if one ignores the fine print.
A double take on the double arc
Sometimes, when the nozzle gets in the way, a plasma cutting torch goes haywire. A new study sheds some light on why.
Making waves with the Moon's shadow
As it sails across Earth during a solar eclipse, the lunar shadow creates a bow wave in the ionosphere like a moving boat does in water.
Toward an easily fabricated artificial leaf
Sunlight, silicon, and readily available catalysts turn water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Shifty surfaces bend the rules of ray optics
Researchers have outlined a recipe for fashioning subwavelength optical components from plasmonic antennas.
Vacuum-induced transparency
A subtle quantum interference effect controls how a cloud of atoms in an optical cavity responds to just a single photon.
Discoverers of the accelerating expansion of the universe share this year's physics Nobel
Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, and Brian Schmidt are the recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics for their momentous 1998 discovery.
Squeezed light for gravitational waves
By tinkering with light’s quantum fluctuations, researchers have improved the sensitivity of one of the interferometers that they hope will one day detect the elusive gravitational waves.
Shedding light on chiral substrates
Photoemission techniques can be used to tease out the chiral orientation of metal-oxide substrates that selectively adsorb chiral molecules.
Meniscus lithography and Moiré patterns
Evaporation of a trapped liquid can arrange nanoparticles into tunable patterns with long-range order.
World's tiniest combustion chambers
New findings suggest that contrary to conventional wisdom, nanobubbles can host explosions.
Tiny, tangled wires keep photons from reflecting
A simple process for fabricating an antireflective coating may in time be applied to make more efficient solar cells.
Water's response to ultralow magnetic fields comes as a surprise
A record-sensitive nuclear magnetic resonance experiment proves we still don’t know all there is to know about the most abundant liquid on the planet.
Asteroid dust has same composition as meteorites
A sample of asteroid dust has clinched the link between them.
A microfluidics path to harvesting mechanical energy
Embedded in a pair of shoes, circuits composed of a train of conductive droplets can generate a few watts of power—enough to charge a cell phone during a casual stroll.
What's inside a crumpled ball?
Crumpled sheets of paper are a familiar form to most of us, but they still hold many secrets.
Nanoscale electrochemistry
Few energy sources match the energy densities of hydrocarbon fuels. Fuel cells and lithium-air batteries tap into atmospheric oxygen to increase their efficiencies but the nanoscale dynamics are not well understood until now.
Antiproton belt girdles Earth
The orbiting PAMELA charged-particle spectrometer has revealed a significant population of antiprotons magnetically trapped in Earth’s inner Van Allen Belt.
Metal-like microbial nanowires
Protein filaments made by some bacteria may bridge the gap between solid-state electronics and biological systems.
Scalable entanglement in an optical frequency comb
Using a single nonlinear optical element, researchers have entangled dozens of the comb’s optical modes.
Network analysis diagnoses kidney disease
Correlations in the concentrations of hundreds of different biomolecules could provide a way to diagnose obstructive nephropathy early and effectively.
Minimalist model captures water-cycle complexities
Equations inspired by population-dynamics theory may help explain drizzles, downpours, and disappearing clouds.
Acoustic levitation
Though a loudspeaker’s pressure field isn’t nearly strong enough to blow you backward, acoustic pressure can suspend millimeter-sized objects against the force of gravity.
Frequency metrology in ultracold helium
Researchers combine optical trapping and frequency comb technology to control and measure the interaction of light with degenerate quantum gases.
A sound strategy for pollination
A specialized leaf on the vine Marcgravia evenia uses acoustics to lure pollinating bats.
Spin waves and superconductors
Short-range spin waves known as paramagnons are strong enough to hold electron pairs together in high-temperature superconducting cuprates.
A classical oscillator takes the sideband route to the quantum ground state
The cooling and damping of a micromechanical oscillator’s motion to the ground state could pave the way to storage of quantum information and generation of entangled states in mechanical systems.
The chaotic orbits of asteroids and Earth
To properly extrapolate the past and future positions of Earth, one has to include not just the Sun, Moon, and other planets, but also asteroids. Still, such calculations can only go so far.
Antineutrinos reveal a primordial source of Earth’s radiated heat
Every second, Earth expels 44 terajoules of energy into space. Much of that energy arises from the decay of radioactive isotopes but the remainder flows from an energy reservoir created billions of years ago, as our planet formed.
Gravitational lensing of the CMB
With new high-resolution data, researchers can determine that the background has been gravitationally distorted without knowing where the distorting foreground structures are.
An ancient buried landscape
Modeling the erosion history of a now-buried landscape reveals how the rock, which formed under water, was once lifted above sea level.
Protein thermodynamics, measured on the move
Perturbing biomolecules and then watching them relax may be a kind, gentle way to study protein folding in vivo.
Soda cans focus sound to subwavelength spots
A low-tech experiment demonstrates how time-reversal methods and an array of the cans can be used to beat the diffraction limit.
The electron’s electric dipole moment
It hasn’t been found yet, but the limits are getting interesting.
A nanoscale mosaic model of static electricity
A closer look at contact-induced static charge
Tantalizing and rare neutrino oscillation
The first appearance of electron neutrinos amidst an underground beam of muon neutrinos has been reported by Japan's T2K collaboration.
Houston's structures thwart cleansing breezes
A new computer simulation sheds light on why the coastal city sometimes endures dangerous ozone pollution
Stirring superfluids
If you chill helium-3 atoms enough, they settle into a single collective ground state, a Bose–Einstein condensate, that is a superfluid. Theorists can now characterize the vigorous turbulence that results from shaking or stirring in fermionic superfluids.
Fluorescing diamonds inside living cells
Researchers led by the University of Melbourne’s Lloyd Hollenberg have carried out magnetic resonance experiments on individual nanodiamonds placed inside human cells.
Domain walls on the fast track
Researchers in France have figured out how to beat the Walker breakdown, a turbulence-triggering instability that slows down the switching of magnetic moments.
High-spin early stars
First-generation stars were not only very massive, as is generally thought, but also very rapidly spinning, with surface speeds as high as 800 km/s.
Bose-Einstein condensation in the textbook and in the lab
Albert Einstein’s description of Bose–Einstein condensation is based on a statistical argument, but experiences in the lab sometimes diverge from the textbook example.
Optical pump-probe diagnosis for melanoma?
Several noninvasive imaging techniques have been explored to detect skin cancer, but they can't distinguish between melanins. A nonlinear optical pump–probe technique may fix this problem.
Gravity Probe B concludes its 50-year quest
Results of an experiment conceived around 1960 to test general relativity and launched in 2004 were announced at a NASA press conference earlier this month: Albert Einstein’s theory passed.
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