The COVID-19 pandemic provided a driving force for researchers to seek out new disinfection methods that could tackle future viral outbreaks. One promising approach relies on the use of nanoparticles, with several metal and metal oxide nanoparticles showing anti-viral activity against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. With this in mind, researchers from Sweden and Estonia investigated the effect of such nanoparticles on two different virus types.

Aiming to elucidate the nanoparticles’ mode of action, they discovered a previously unknown antiviral mechanism, reporting their findings in Nanoscale.

The researchers – from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and the University of Tartu – examined triethanolamine terminated titania (TATT) nanoparticles, spherical 3.5-nm diameter titanium dioxide (titania) particles that are expected to interact strongly with viral surface proteins.

They tested the antiviral activity of the TATT nanoparticles against two types of virus: swine transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) – an enveloped coronavirus that’s surrounded by a phospholipid membrane and transmembrane proteins; and the non-enveloped encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV), which does not have a phospholipid membrane. SARS-CoV-2 has a similar structure to TGEV: an enveloped virus with an outer lipid membrane and three proteins forming the surface.

“We collaborated with the University of Tartu in studies of antiviral materials,” explains lead author Vadim Kessler from SLU. “They had found strong activity from cerium dioxide nanoparticles, which acted as oxidants for membrane destruction. In our own studies, we saw that TATT formed appreciably stable complexes with viral proteins, so we could expect potentially much higher activity at lower concentration.”

In this latest investigation, the team aimed to determine whether one of these potential mechanisms – blocking of surface proteins, or membrane disruption via oxidation by nanoparticle-generated reactive oxygen species – is the likely cause of TATT’s antiviral activity. The first of these effects usually occurs at low (nanomolar to micromolar) nanoparticle concentrations, the latter at higher (millimolar) concentrations.

Mode of action

To assess the nanoparticle’s antiviral activity, the researchers exposed viral suspensions to colloidal TATT solutions for 1 h, at room temperature and in the dark (without UV illumination). For comparison, they repeated the process with silicotungstate polyoxometalate (POM) nanoparticles, which are not able to bind strongly to cell membranes.

The nanoparticle-exposed viruses were then used to infect cells and the resulting cell viability served as a measure of the virus infectivity. The team note that the nanoparticles alone showed no cytotoxicity against the host cells.

Measuring viral infectivity after nanoparticle exposure revealed that POM nanoparticles did not exhibit antiviral effects on either virus, even at relatively high concentrations of 1.25 mM. TATT nanoparticles, on the other hand, showed significant antiviral activity against the enveloped TGEV virus at concentrations starting from 0.125 mM, but did not affect the non-enveloped EMCV virus.

Based on previous evidence that TATT nanoparticles interact strongly with proteins in darkness, the researchers expected to see antiviral activity at a nanomolar level. But the finding that TATT activity only occurred at millimolar concentrations, and only affected the enveloped virus, suggests that the antiviral effect is not due to blocking of surface proteins. And as titania is not oxidative in darkness, the team propose that the antiviral effect is actually due to direct complexation of nanoparticles with membrane phospholipids – a mode of antiviral action not previously considered.

“Typical nanoparticle concentrations required for effects on membrane proteins correspond to the protein content on the virus surface. With a 1:1 complex, we would need maximum nanomolar concentrations,” Kessler explains. “We saw an effect at about 1 mM/l, which is far higher. This was the indication for us that the effect was on the whole of membrane.”

Verifying the membrane effect

To corroborate their hypothesis, the researchers examined the leakage of dye-labelled RNA from the TGEV coronavirus after 1 h exposure to nanoparticles. The fluorescence signal from the dye showed that TATT-treated TGEV released significantly more RNA than non-exposed virus, attributed to the nanoparticles disrupting the virus’s phospholipid membrane.

Finally, the team studied the interactions between TATT nanoparticles and two model phospholipid compounds. Both molecules formed strong complexes with TATT nanoparticles, while their interaction with POM nanoparticles was weak. This additional verification led the researchers to conclude that the antiviral effect of TATT in dark conditions is due to direct membrane disruption via complexation of titania nanoparticles with phospholipids.

“To the best of our knowledge, [this] proves a new pathway for metal oxide nanoparticles antiviral action,” they write.

Importantly, the nanoparticles are non-toxic, and work at room temperature without requiring UV illumination – enabling simple and low-cost disinfection methods. “While it was known that disinfection with titania could work in UV light, we showed that no special technical measures are necessary,” says Kessler.

Kessler suggests that the nanoparticles could be used to coat surfaces to destroy enveloped viruses, or in cost-effective filters to decontaminate air or water. “[It should be] possible to easily create antiviral surfaces that don’t require any UV activation just by spraying them with a solution of TATT, or possibly other oxide nanoparticles with an affinity to phosphate, including iron and aluminium oxides in particular,” he tells Physics World.

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Like a cursed spell, space-based missile defense keeps getting resurrected — no matter how many times it’s been banished. President Trump’s Executive Order, The Iron Dome for America, released Jan. […]

The post Hubble, bubble, toil, and trouble: stirring up an arms race in space appeared first on SpaceNews.

The challenge is particularly acute in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) where many military communications and early warning satellites operate

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Jovian satellites may have formed in cold spots in the disk of gas and dust surrounding the infant planet

Learn how the molecule EBC-46 could advance how HIV is treated and how researchers discovered it.

Carbon-based organic photovoltaics (OPVs) may be much better than previously thought at withstanding the high-energy radiation and sub-atomic particle bombardments of space environments. This finding, by researchers at the University of Michigan in the US, challenges a long-standing belief that OPV devices systematically degrade under conditions such as those encountered by spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. If verified in real-world tests, the finding suggests that OPVs could one day rival traditional thin-film photovoltaic technologies based on rigid semiconductors such as gallium arsenide.

Lightweight, robust, radiation-resilient photovoltaics are critical technologies for many aerospace applications. OPV cells are particularly attractive for this sector because they are ultra-lightweight, thermally stable and highly flexible. This last property allows them to be integrated onto curved surfaces as well as flat ones.

Today’s single-junction OPV devices also have a further advantage. Thanks to power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) that now exceed 20%, their specific power – that is, the power generated per weight – can be up to 40 W/g. This is significantly higher than traditional photovoltaic technologies, including those based on silicon (1 W/g) and gallium arsenide (3 W/g) on flexible substrates. Devices with such a large specific power could provide energy for small spacecraft heading into low-Earth orbit and beyond.

Until now, however, scientists believed that these materials had a fatal flaw for space applications: they weren’t robust to irradiation by the energetic particles (predominantly fluxes of electrons and protons) that spacecraft routinely encounter.

Testing two typical OPV materials

In the new work, researchers led by electrical and computer engineer Yongxi Li and physicist Stephen Forrest analysed how two typical OPV materials behave when exposed to proton particles with differing energies. They did this by characterizing their optoelectronic properties before and after irradiation exposure. The first materials were made up of small molecules (DBP, DTDCPB and C₇₀) that had been grown using a technique called vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE). The second group consisted of solution-processed small molecules and polymers (PCE-10, PM6, BT-CIC and Y6).

The team’s measurements show that the OPVs grown by VTE retained their initial PV efficiency under radiation fluxes of up to 10¹² cm⁻². In contrast, polymer-based OPVs lose 50% of their original efficiency under the same conditions. This, say the researchers, is because proton irradiation breaks carbon-hydrogen bonds in the polymers’ molecular alkyl side chains. This leads to polymer cross-linking and the generation of charge traps that imprison electrons and prevent them from generating useful current.

The good news, Forrest says, is that many of these defects can be mended by thermally annealing the materials at temperatures of 45 °C or less. After such an annealing, the cell’s PCE returns to nearly 90% of its value before irradiation. This means that Sun-facing solar cells made of these materials could essentially “self-heal”, though Forrest acknowledges that whether this actually happens in deep space is a question that requires further investigation. “It may be more straightforward to design the material so that the electron traps never appear in the first place or by filling them with other atoms, so eliminating this problem,” he says.

According to Li, the new study, which is detailed in Joule, could aid the development of standardized stability tests for how protons interact with OPV devices. Such tests already exist for c-Si and GaAs solar cells, but not for OPVs, he says.

The Michigan researchers say they will now be developing materials that combine high PCEs with strong resilience to proton exposure. “We will then use these materials to fabricate OPV devices that we will then test on CubeSats and spacecraft in real-world environments,” Li tells Physics World.

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In this episode of Commercial Space Transformers SpaceNews Senior Staff Writer Jason Rainbow speaks with Karim Michel Sabbagh, Managing Director, Space42.

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Airbus Defence and Space won a contract to build a pair of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellites for the U.K. military.

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HELSINKI — China conducted the first launch of the Long March 8A early Tuesday, carrying a second batch of satellites into orbit for the national Guowang project. The first Long […]

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NASA’s Martian probes have captured photos of the Red Planet’s “extremely active” spring.

International conferences are a great way to meet people from all over the world to share the excitement of physics and discuss the latest developments in the subject. But the International Conference on Women in Physics (ICWIP) offers more by allowing us to to listen to the experiences of people from many diverse backgrounds and cultures. At the same time, it highlights the many challenges that women in physics still face.

The ICWIP series is organized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and the week-long event typically features a mixture of plenaries, workshops and talks. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conferences were held in various locations across the world, but the last two have been held entirely online. The last such meeting – the 8th ICWIP run from India in 2023 – saw around 300 colleagues from 57 countries attend. I was part of a seven-strong UK contingent – at various stages of our careers – who gave a presentation describing the current situation for women in physics in the UK.

Being held solely online didn’t stop delegates fostering a sense of community or discussing their predicaments and challenges. What became evident during the week was the extent and types of issues that women from across the globe still have to contend with. One is the persistence of implicit and explicit gender bias in their institutions or workplaces. This, along with negative stereotyping of women, produces discrepancies between male and female numbers in institutions, particularly at postgraduate level and beyond. Women often end up choosing not to pursue physics later into their careers and being reluctant to take up leadership roles.

Much more needs to be done to ensure women are encouraged in their careers. Indeed, women often face challenging work–life balances, with some expected to play a greater role in family commitments than men, and have little support at their workplaces. One postdoctoral researcher at the 2023 meeting, for example, attempted to discuss her research poster in the virtual conference room while looking after her young children at home – the literal balancing of work and life in action.

To improve their circumstances, delegates suggested enhancing legislation to combat gender bias and improve institutional culture through education to reduce negative stereotypes. More should also be done to improve networks and professional associations for women in physics. Another factor mentioned at the meeting, meanwhile, is the importance of early education and issues related to equity of teaching, whether delivered face-to-face or online.

But women can face disadvantages other than their gender, such as socioeconomic status and identity, resulting in a unique set of challenges for them. This is the principle of intersectionality and was widely discussed in the context of problems in career progression.

In the UK, change is starting to happen. The Limit Less campaign by the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World, encourages students post 16 years old to study physics. The annual Conference for Undergraduate Women and Non-binary Physicists provides individuals with support and encouragement in their personal and professional development. There are also other initiatives such as the STEM Returner programme and the Daphne Jackson Trust for those wishing to return to a physics career. WISE Ten Steps contributes to supporting workplace culture positively and the Athena SWAN and the IOP’s new Physics Inclusion Award aims to improve women’s prospects.

As we now look forward to the next ICWIP there is still a lot more to do. We must ensure that women can continue in their physics careers while recognizing that intersectionality will play an increasingly significant role in shaping future equity, diversity and inclusion policies. It is likely that soon a new team will be sought from academia and industry, comprising of individuals at various career stages to represent the UK at the next ICWIP. Please do get involved if you are interested. Participation is not limited to women.

Women are doing physics in a variety of challenging circumstances. Gaining an international outlook of different cultural perspectives, as is possible at an international conference like the ICWIP, helps to put things in context and highlights the many common issues faced by women in physics. Taking the time to listen and learn from each other is critical, a process that can facilitate collaboration on issues that affect us all. Fundamentally, we all share a passion for physics, and endeavour to be catalysts for positive change for future generations.

• This article was based on discussions with Sally Jordan from the Open University; Holly Campbell, UK Atomic Energy Authority; Josie C, AWE; Wendy Sadler and Nils Rehm, Cardiff University; and Sarah Bakewell and Miriam Dembo, Institute of Physics

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A Texas state agency awarded $47.7 million in grants to five space companies to support projects like facilities and spacecraft development in the state.

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NASA has selected SpaceX to launch a small exoplanet science mission as a rideshare payload as soon as September.

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Learn about the El Mirón cave in northern Spain, home to the unusually red bones of a buried woman and ancient carnivores that came to scavenge for leftovers.

NASA is expanding testing of distributed autonomy for its first satellite swarm, Starling.

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The demonstrations will test novel tech for building large structures in space

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Learn how time scales for objects thousands versus millions of years old could be better synchronized.

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The Euclid space telescope brings the Einstein Ring into view. Check out the accidental discovery and what it looks like through the lens.

Learn about the upcoming snow moon that will happen on February 12, 2025, and how February sometimes doesn’t have a full moon.

In its notice outlining the large cut in university funding, the US National Institutes of Health seems to draw on a report from a conservative think tank that denounces the “political left.”

University of Minnesota’s Sylvain Lesné was at the heart of an image-doctoring scandal on study of key amyloid protein linked to dementia

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A government-only version of NASA core Flight System with enhanced security and other features will be released in mid-2025.

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We tend to define ourselves by the subjects we studied, and I am no different. I originally did physics before going on to complete a PhD in aeronautical engineering, which has led to a lifelong career in aerospace.

However, it took me quite a few years before I realized that there is more than one route to an enjoyable and successful career. I used to think that a career began at the “coal face” – doing things you were trained for or had a specialist knowledge of – before managing projects then products or people as you progressed to loftier heights.

Many of us naturally fall into one of three fundamental roles: artisan, architect or artist. So which are you?

At some point, I began to realize that while companies often adopt this linear approach to career paths, not everyone is comfortable with it. In fact, I now think that many of us naturally fall into one of three fundamental roles: artisan, architect or artist. So which are you?

Artisans are people who focus on creating functional, practical and often decorative items using hands-on methods or skills. Their work emphasizes craftmanship, attention to detail and the quality of the finished product. For scientists and engineers, artisans are highly skilled people who apply their technical knowledge and know-how. Let’s be honest: they are the ones who get the “real work” done. From programmers to machinists and assemblers, these are the people who create detailed designs and make or maintain a high-quality product.

Architects, on the other hand, combine vision with technical knowledge to create functional and effective solutions. Their work involves designing, planning and overseeing. They have a broader view of what’s happening and may be responsible for delivering projects. They need to ensure tasks are appropriately prioritized and keep things on track and within budget.

Architects also help with guiding on best practice and resolving or unblocking issues. They are the people responsible for ensuring that the end result meets the needs of users and, where applicable, comply with regulations. Typically, this role involves running a project or team – think principal investigator, project manager, software architect or systems engineer.

As for artists, they are the people who have a big picture view of the world – they will not have eyes for the finer details. They are less constrained by a framework and are comfortable working with minimal formal guidance and definition. They have a vision of what will be needed for the future – whether that’s new products and strategic goals or future skills and technology requirements.

Artists set the targets for how an organization, department or business needs to grow and they define strategies for how a business will develop its competitive edge. Artists are often leaders and chiefs.

Which type are you?

To see how these personas work in practice, imagine working for a power utility provider. If there’s a power outage, the artisans will be the people who get the power back on by locating and fixing damaged power lines, repairing substations and so on. They are practical people who know how to make things work.

The architect will be organizing the repair teams, working out who goes to which location, and what to prioritize, ensuring that customers are kept happy and senior leaders are kept informed of progress. The artist, meanwhile, will be thinking about the future. How, for example, can utilities protect themselves better from storm damage and what new technologies or designs can be introduced to make the supply more resilient and minimize disruption?

Predominantly artisans are practical, architects are tactical and artists are strategic but there is an overlap between these qualities. Artisans, architects and artists differ in their goals and methods, but the boundaries between them are blurred. Based on my gut experience as a physicist in industry, I’d say the breakdown between different skills is roughly as shown in the figure below.

Now this breakdown is not hard and fast. To succeed in your career, you need to be creative, inventive and skilful – whatever your role. While working with your colleagues, you need to engage in common processes such as adhering to relevant standards, regulations and quality requirements to deliver quality solutions and products. But thinking of ourselves as artisans, architects or artists may explain why each of us is suited to a certain role.

Know your strengths

Even though we all have something of the other personas in us, what’s important is to know what your own core strength is. I used to believe that the only route for a successful career was to work through each of these personas by starting out as artisan, turning into an architect, and then ultimately becoming an artist. And to be fair, this is how many career paths are structured, which his why we’re often encouraged to think this way.

However, I have worked with people who liked “hands on” work so much, that didn’t want to move to a different role, even though it meant turning down a significant promotion. I also know others who have indeed moved between different personas, only to discover the new type of work did not suit them.

Trouble is, although it’s usually possible to retrace steps, it’s not always straightforward to do so. Quite why that should be the case is not entirely clear. It’s certainly not because people are unwilling to accept a pay cut, but more because changing tack is seen as a retrograde step for both employees and their employers.

To be successful, any team, department or business needs to not only understand the importance of this skills mix but also recognize it’s not a simple pipeline – all three personas are critical to success. So if you don’t know already, I encourage you to think about what you enjoy doing most, using your insights to proactively drive career conversations and decisions. Don’t be afraid to emphasize where your “value add” lies.

If you’re not sure whether a change in persona is right for you, seek advice from mentors and peers or look for a secondment to try it out. The best jobs are the ones where you can spend most of your time doing what you love doing. Whether you’re an artisan, architect or artist – the most impactful employees are the ones who really enjoy what they do.

The post Artisan, architect or artist: what kind of person are you at work? appeared first on Physics World.

A new type of quantum bit (qubit) that stores information in a quantum dot with the help of an ensemble of nuclear spin states has been unveiled by physicists in the UK and Austria. Led by Dorian Gangloff and Mete Atatüre at the University of Cambridge, the team created a collective quantum state that could be used as a quantum register to store and relay information in a quantum communication network of the future.

Quantum communication networks are used to exchange and distribute quantum information between remotely-located quantum computers and other devices. As well as enabling distributed quantum computing, quantum networks can also support secure quantum cryptography. Today, these networks are in the very early stages of development and use the entangled quantum states of photons to transmit information. Network performance is severely limited by decoherence, whereby the quantum information held by photons is degraded as they travel long distances. As a result, effective networks need repeater nodes that receive and then amplify weakened quantum signals.

“To address these limitations, researchers have focused on developing quantum memories capable of reliably storing entangled states to enable quantum repeater operations over extended distances,” Gangloff explains. “Various quantum systems are being explored, with semiconductor quantum dots being the best single-photon generators delivering both photon coherence and brightness.”

Single-photon emission

Quantum dots are widely used for their ability to emit single photons at specific wavelengths. These photons are created by electronic transitions in quantum dots and are ideal for encoding and transmitting quantum information.

However, the electronic spin states of quantum dots are not particularly good at storing quantum information for long enough to be useful as stationary qubits (or nodes) in a quantum network. This is because they contain hundreds or thousands of nuclei with spins that fluctuate. The noise generated by these fluctuations causes the decoherence of qubits based on electronic spin states.

In their previous research, Gangloff and Atatüre’s team showed how this noise could be controlled by sensing how it interacts with the electronic spin states.

Atatüre says, “Building on our previous achievements, we suppressed random fluctuations in the nuclear ensemble using a quantum feedback algorithm. This is already very useful as it dramatically improves the electron spin qubit performance.”

Magnon excitation

Now, using a gallium arsenide quantum dot, the team has used the feedback algorithm to stabilize 13,000 nuclear spin states in a collective, entangled “dark state”. This is a stable quantum state that cannot absorb or emit photons. By introducing just a single nuclear magnon (spin flip) excitation, shared across all 13,000 nuclei, they could then flip the entire ensemble between two different collective quantum states.

Each of these collective states could respectively be defined as a 0 and a 1 in a binary quantum logic system. The team then showed how quantum information could be exchanged between the nuclear system and the quantum dot’s electronic qubit with a fidelity of about 70%.

“The quantum memory maintained the stored state for approximately 130 µs, validating the effectiveness of our protocol,” Gangloff explains. “We also identified unambiguously the factors limiting the current fidelity and storage time, including crosstalk between nuclear modes and optically induced spin relaxation.”

The researchers are hopeful that their approach could transform one of the biggest limitations to quantum dot-based communication networks into a significant advantage.

“By integrating a multi-qubit register with quantum dots – the brightest and already commercially available single-photon sources – we elevate these devices to a much higher technology readiness level,” Atatüre explains.

With some further improvements to their system’s fidelity, the researchers are now confident that it could be used to strengthen interactions between quantum dot qubits and the photonic states they produce, ultimately leading to longer coherence times in quantum communication networks. Elsewhere, it could even be used to explore new quantum phenomena, and gather new insights into the intricate dynamics of quantum many-body systems.

The research is described in Nature Physics.

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MDA Space is building more than 50 satellites for Globalstar’s Apple-backed next-generation low Earth orbit constellation under a $768 million contract.

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As the use of space accelerates, so too does the risk of orbital debris — a pressing threat to communications, navigation and other technologies underpinning life on Earth. An estimated […]

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Almost one year ago, at the Mobile World Congress, the Global System for Mobile Communications Association and Global Satellite Operators Association announced their cooperation to foster innovation and seamless terrestrial […]

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Seismic waves radiating through the planet’s interior point to dramatic activity

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From curiosity to discovery, together.

Whether it’s the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup, all big global events need a cheeky, fun mascot. So welcome to Quinnie – the official mascot for the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ) 2025.

Unveiled at the launch of the IYQ at the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris on 4 February, Quinnie has been drawn by Jorge Cham, the creator of the long-running cartoon strip PHD Comics.

Quinnie was developed for UNESCO in a collaboration between Cham and Physics Magazine, which is published by the American Physical Society (APS) – one of the founding partners of IYQ.

“Quinnie represents a young generation approaching quantum science with passion, ingenuity, and energy,” says Physics editor Matteo Rini. “We imagine her effortlessly surfing on quantum-mechanical wave functions and playfully engaging with the knottiest quantum ideas, from entanglement to duality.”

Quinnie is set to appear in a series of animated cartoons that the APS will release throughout the year.

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HELSINKI — A Pakistan-developed rover will fly on China’s Chang’e-8 moon lander mission in 2028, following an agreement between respective agencies. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Space and […]

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A newly-discovered class of quasiparticles known as fractional excitons offers fresh opportunities for condensed-matter research and could reveal unprecedented quantum phases, say physicists at Brown University in the US. The new quasiparticles, which are neither bosons nor fermions and carry no charge, could have applications in quantum computing and sensing, they say.

In our everyday, three-dimensional world, particles are classified as either fermions or bosons. Fermions such as electrons follow the Pauli exclusion principle, which prevents them from occupying the same quantum state. This property underpins phenomena like the structure of atoms and the behaviour of metals and insulators. Bosons, on the other hand, can occupy the same state, allowing for effects like superconductivity and superfluidity.

Fractional excitons defy this traditional classification, says Jia Leo Li, who led the research. Their properties lie somewhere in between those of fermions and bosons, making them more akin to anyons, which are particles that exist only in two-dimensional systems. But that’s only one aspect of their unusual nature, Li adds. “Unlike typical anyons, which carry a fractional charge of an electron, fractional excitons are neutral particles, representing a distinct type of quantum entity,” he says.

The experiment

Li and colleagues created the fractional excitons using two sheets of graphene – a form of carbon just one atom thick – separated by a layer of another two-dimensional material, hexagonal boron nitride. This layered setup allowed them to precisely control the movement of electrons and positively-charged “holes” and thus to generate excitons, which are pairs of electrons and holes that behave like single particles.

The team then applied a 12 T magnetic field to their bilayer structure. This strong field caused the electrons in the graphene to split into fractional charges – a well-known phenomenon that occurs in the fractional quantum Hall effect. “Here, strong magnetic fields create Landau electronic levels that induce particles with fractional charges,” Li explains. “The bilayer structure facilitates pairing between these positive and negative charges, making fractional excitons possible.”

“Distinct from any known particles”

The fractional excitons represent a quantum system of neutral particles that obey fractional quantum statistics, interact via dipolar forces and are distinct from any known particles, Li tells Physics World. He adds that his team’s study, which is detailed in Nature, builds on prior works that predicted the existence of excitons in the fractional quantum Hall effect (see, for example, Nature Physics 13, 751 2017, Nature Physics 15, 898-903 2019, Science 375 (6577), 205-209 2022).

The researchers now plan to explore the properties of fractional excitons further. “Our key objectives include measuring the fractional charge of the constituent particles and confirming their anyonic statistics,” Li explains. Studies of this nature could shed light on how fractional excitons interact and flow, potentially revealing new quantum phases, he adds.

“Such insights could have profound implications for quantum technologies, including ultra-sensitive sensors and robust quantum computing platforms,” Li says. “As research progresses, fractional excitons may redefine the boundaries of condensed-matter physics and applied quantum science.”

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Object is the massively distorted image of another galaxy

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a spectacular image of an Einstein ring – a circle of light formed around a galaxy by gravitational lensing. Taken by the €1.4bn Euclid mission, the ring is a result of the gravitational effects of a galaxy located around 590 million light-years from Earth.

Euclid was launched in July 2023 and is currently located in a spot in space called Lagrange Point 2 – a gravitational balance point some 1.5 million kilometres beyond the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Euclid has a 1.2 m-diameter telescope, a camera and a spectrometer that it uses to plot a 3D map of the distribution of more than two billion galaxies. The images it takes are about four times as sharp as current ground-based telescopes.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that light will bend around objects in space, so that they focus the light like a giant lens. This gravitational lensing effect is bigger for more massive objects and means we can sometimes see the light from distant galaxies that would otherwise be hidden.

Yet if the alignment is just right, the light from the distant source galaxy bends to form a spectacular ring around the foreground object. In this case, the mass of galaxy NGC 6505 is bending and magnifying the light from a more distant galaxy, which is about 4.42 billion light-years away, into a ring.

Studying such rings can shed light on the expansion of the universe as well as the nature of dark matter.

Euclid’s first science results were released in May 2024, following its first shots of the cosmos in November 2023. Hints of the ring were first spotted in September 2023 when Euclid was being testing with follow-up measurements now revealing it in exquisite detail.

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A White House statement mentioned NASA’s Artemis campaign of lunar exploration even as the space industry is preparing for significant changes to it.

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NASA expects to continue using electric vans to transport astronauts to the pad for Artemis missions even though the vehicles’ manufacturer is bankrupt.

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