Imagine a proton catching a wave and surfing it to gain speed. While the imagery may seem wild, the premise of laser-driven ion acceleration has promise as an alternative to conventional accelerators. However, the ultrathin targets used to drive this increase in ion energy are vulnerable to the weak prepulse that precedes the main high-intensity […]

Working in close collaboration, researchers from Paderborn University, the University of Basel and Ruhr University Bochum have made a breakthrough in quantum communication. In their recently published paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, they demonstrate how special semiconductor nanostructures can be used to generate individual photons and pairs of photons that are almost perfectly […]

In the conventional diagram of an atom, the center depicts a nucleus—a spherical cluster of protons and neutrons. But that sphere is a simplification: nuclei can deform into exotic shapes that appear more like a pear, football or Frisbee. Understanding why and when nuclei distort is crucial for predicting and modeling how they will behave. […]

If you mount a pickle on two metal forks and plug it into a socket, one end will light up in a brilliant orange glow. It’s a classic K–12 science demonstration, but the exact physics behind the illumination has long remained a mystery.

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Researchers at Tohoku University, in collaboration with the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and the University of Tokyo, have taken an important step toward semiconductor quantum computing using zinc oxide (ZnO).

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Most magnets have two poles: north and south, or positive and negative, in a familiar arrangement called a “dipole.” But researchers are increasingly uncovering more complex forms of magnetism.

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Boats passing over smooth water form a pair of diffusion wakes behind them veering off at a certain angle. Turbulence occurs along the line directly behind the boat, but the two diffusion waves are at a theoretical angle of 19.5° from the same line, for deep, ideally smooth water.

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Isaac Newton is typically portrayed as a solitary scientist with intense focus who was obsessed with power and deeply egotistical. But a new book by Caltech historians Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold takes a deeper look at Newton’s life in the two decades leading up to the 1687 publication of his groundbreaking text, Principia Mathematica, […]