news 2022

TU Wien (Vienna) has succeeded in making a new type of material usable for chip technology. This enables faster, more efficient computers and new types of quantum devices. Our current chip technology is largely based on silicon. Only in very special components a small amount of germanium is added. But there are good reasons to use higher germanium contents in the future: The compound semiconductor silicon-germanium has decisive advantages over today's silicon technology in terms of energy efficiency and achievable clock frequencies.

Physicists from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, together with colleagues from Düsseldorf, Gothenburg, Lyngby and Trieste have developed an ingenious solution for separating bonded nano-components. Their idea is to immerse the nano-components in a solvent near its critical point. In the experimental setup, they succeeded in separating the components in a controllable fashion by only changing the temperature of the solvent.

Mainz-based scientists have been members of the IceCube consortium since 1999 For the first time, an international team of scientists found evidence of high-energy neutrino emission from NGC 1068, also known as Messier 77, an active galaxy in the constellation of Cetus and one of the most familiar and well-studied galaxies to date.

The device provides greater sensitivity and speed than previous versions, and could be used for industrial inspection, airport security, and communications. Terahertz radiation, whose wavelengths lie between those of microwaves and visible light, can penetrate many nonmetallic materials and detect signatures of certain molecules.

A peculiar property of the Earth's magnetic field could help us to work out how our planet was created 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new scientific assessment. There are several theories about how the Earth and the Moon were formed, most involving a giant impact. They vary from a model where the impacting object strikes the newly formed Earth a glancing blow and then escapes, through to one where the collision is so energetic that both the impactor and the Earth are vaporized.

Astrophysicists say that cosmic inflation - a point in the Universe's infancy when space-time expanded exponentially, and what physicists really refer to when they talk about the -Big Bang can in principle be ruled out in an assumption-free way. Is it possible in principle to test cosmic inflation in a model-independent way? Sunny Vagnozzi The astrophysicists, from the University of Cambridge, the University of Trento, and Harvard University, say that there is a clear, unambiguous signal in the cosmos which could eliminate inflation as a possibility.

An X-ray pulsar is a rotating magnetized neutron star. The very first direct measurement of the polarization of an X-ray pulsar by the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) space telescope has challenged previous models of such systems. The degree of polarization of the X-ray pulsar Hercules X-1 was much lower than theoretically predicted, so astrophysicists are now having to reconsider their basic ideas about the geometry and structure of matter flows.

For the first time, researchers have been able to make a superconducting component from graphene that is quantum coherent and sensitive to magnetic fields. This step opens up interesting prospects for fundamental research. Less than 20 years ago, Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim first created two-dimensional crystals consisting of just one layer of carbon atoms.

A signature in the X-ray light emitted by a highly magnetised dead star known as a magnetar suggests the star has a solid surface with no atmosphere, according to a new study by an international collaboration co-led by UCL researchers. The study, published in the journal Science , uses data from a NASA satellite, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), which was launched last December.

On Earth, billions of subatomic particles called neutrinos pass through us every second, but we never notice because they rarely interact with matter. Because of this, neutrinos can travel straight paths over vast distances unimpeded, carrying information about their cosmic origins. Although most of these aptly named "ghost" particles detected on Earth originate from the Sun or our own atmosphere, some neutrinos come from the cosmos, far beyond our galaxy.

By coupling a tensile machine and an in situ dielectric measurement, physicists from Lyon (ENS de Lyon Physicis Laboratory and MATEIS) have made a breakthrough in understanding the molecular reorganizations that allow a polymer film to stretch. The results of this study are published in the journal Macromolecules .

In the field of molecular magnetism, the design of devices with technological applications at the nanoscale —quantum computing, molecular spintronics, magnetic cooling, nanomedicine, high-density information storage, etc.— requires those magnetic molecules that are placed on the surface to preserve their structure, functionality and properties.

A new approach sheds light on the behavior of turbulent structures that can affect the energy generated during fusion reactions, with implications for reactor design. Fusion, which promises practically unlimited, carbon-free energy using the same processes that power the sun, is at the heart of a worldwide research effort that could help mitigate climate change.

A technique for synthesizing many "white graphene" nanotubes at a time paves the way for stronger, heat-resistant composites, and membranes for renewable energy. Engineers at MIT and the University of Tokyo have produced centimeter-scale structures, large enough for the eye to see, that are packed with hundreds of billions of hollow aligned fibers, or nanotubes, made from hexagonal boron nitride.

The computing power of quantum computers is currently still very low. Increasing it is currently still proving to be a major challenge. Physicists at the University of Innsbruck now present a new architecture for a universal quantum computer that overcomes such limitations and could be the basis for building the next generation of quantum computers in the near future.

How the Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute develops novel information and communication systems. The future of our information-based society will be built on hybrid technologies, EHCI researchers Diana Leitao and Chigo Okonkwo are convinced. And that is why both scientists, though firmly rooted in their respective disciplines of physics and electrical engineering, are strong advocates for seeking synergies between people with different research backgrounds.

The lightest neutron star so far found is located at the center of the supernova remnant HESS J1731'347 . Dr. Victor Doroshenko, Dr. Valery Suleimanov, Dr. Gerd Pühlhofer and Professor Andrea Santangelo from the High Energy Astrophysics section of the University of Tübingen's Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics discovered the unusual object with the help of X-ray telescopes in space.

Mainz University succeeds in the first round of the new Carl Zeiss Foundation Wildcard program / Researchers present an innovative approach for enhancing electronic devices 26 October 2022 Researcher

Finding cannot be explained by classical assumptions. Study under the leadership of the University of Bonn An international team of astrophysicists has made a puzzling discovery while analyzing certain star clusters. The University of Bonn played a major role in the study. The finding challenges Newton's laws of gravity, the researchers write in their publication.

Using machine learning and simple X-ray spectra, researchers can uncover compounds that might enable next-generation computer chips or quantum devices. Topological materials, an exotic class of materials whose surfaces exhibit different electrical or functional properties than their interiors, have been a hot area of research since their experimental realization in 2007 - a finding that sparked further research and precipitated a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016.