Feature Channels: Particle Physics

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Experiments promote a curious flipside of decaying monopoles: a reality where particle physics is quite literally turned on its head

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A new study led by Dr. Xuekun Lu from Queen Mary University of London in collaboration with an international team of researchers from the UK and USA has found a way to prevent lithium plating in electric vehicle batteries, which could lead to faster charging times.

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The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment collaboration, an international team of researchers measuring key properties of ghostlike particles called neutrinos, is a co-recipient of the European Physical Society's (EPS) 2023 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize.

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A team from Aalto University and the University of Jyväskylä have created an artificial quantum magnet featuring a quasiparticle made of entangled electrons, the triplon.

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An experiment to explore the 3D structures of nucleon resonances – excited states of protons and neutrons -- at Jefferson Lab offers critical insights into the basic building blocks of matter and has added one more puzzle piece to the vast picture of the chaotic, nascent universe that existed just after the Big Bang.

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Scientists reported the first observations of how hypernuclei flow from particle collisions. The researchers observed that the hypernuclei flow much the same as ordinary nuclei in a way that scales with their overall nuclear mass.

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Predictions of neutrino-nucleon interaction made using the Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (LQCD) nuclear theory method predict stronger interaction than predictions determined from older, less precise experimental data.

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Argonne National Laboratory is reimagining the lab spaces and scientific careers of the future by harnessing the power of robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning in the quest for new knowledge.

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The Muon g-2 collaboration announced an updated measurement. The new result aligns with the collaboration’s first result, and it’s twice as precise. The experiment measures a property of the muon that might indicate existence of new particles or forces.

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Scientists working on Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment released the world’s most precise measurement yet of the magnetic moment of the muon, bringing particle physics closer to the ultimate showdown between theory and experiment that may uncover new particles or forces.

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In 1956, theoretical physicist David Pines predicted that electrons in a solid could form a composite particle called a demon. It's eluded detection since its prediction....until now.

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In a banner year for Los Alamos National Laboratory in the competition for Department of Energy Early Career Research Awards, four scientists nabbed multiyear funding for their projects.

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Four scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have been selected by DOE's Office of Science to receive significant funding through its Early Career Research Program.

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At particle accelerator facilities around the world, scientists rely on powerful X-rays to reveal the structure and behavior of atoms and molecules. Now, researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have calculated how to make X-ray pulses at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFEL) even brighter and more reliable by building a special cavity chamber and diamond mirrors around an XFEL.

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A collaboration of nuclear theorists has used supercomputers to predict the spatial distributions of charges, momentum, and other properties of "up" and "down" quarks within protons. The calculations show that the up quark is more symmetrically distributed and spread over a smaller distance than the down quark.

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PNNL scientists design a highly sensitive neutrino detector for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.

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Scientists working on the Dark SRF experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have demonstrated unprecedented sensitivity in an experimental setup used to search for theorized particles called dark photons.

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Allison Zec has been awarded the 2022 JSA Thesis Prize for recounting experiments that achieved the world record in the precise measurement of an electron beam’s polarization. Since 1999, the prize has been awarded to the top doctoral dissertation on research related to Jefferson Lab science. The prize is funded by the JSA Initiatives Fund program, which supports programs, initiatives and activities that further the scientific outreach and promote the science, education and technology missions of Jefferson Lab, and which benefit the laboratory’s scientific user community.

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The cryogenic plant, to be installed a mile underground, will provide the cooling for two large liquid-argon neutrino detectors for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.

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In Applied Physics Letters, researchers report achieving self-sustaining and long-term levitation of millimeter-sized droplets of several different liquids without any external forces. To get the droplets to levitate, they use solutocapillary convection, which occurs when a surface tension gradient is formed by nonuniform distribution of vapor molecules from the droplet at the pool surface.

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Researchers recently reviewed the current standard procedure to determine the nuclear weak distribution, which describes the distribution of active protons in a nucleus. The new analysis found significant differences with previous model-based determinations of the nuclear weak distribution. The results provide a partial explanation for a discrepancy between predictions from particle physics theory and experimental measurement of a fundamental quantity.

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In chemistry, a molecule or ion is said to be chiral if it cannot be superposed on to its mirror image by any combination of rotations, translations, or conformational changes. A chiral molecule or ion exists in two forms, called enantiomers, that are mirror images of each other; they are often distinguished as either ‘right-handed’ or ‘left-handed’ by their absolute configuration. Enantiomers exhibit similar physical and chemical properties, except when interacting with polarized light and reacting with other chiral compounds, respectively.

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New measurements of how particles flow from collisions of different types of particles at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have provided new insights into the origin of the shape of hot specks of matter generated in these collisions. The results may lead to a deeper understanding of the properties and dynamics of this form of matter, known as a quark-gluon plasma (QGP).

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The recent tragic loss of the Titan submersible in the depths of the North Atlantic has brought the fascinating (and very dangerous) world of Oceanography and Marine Science to the forefront. Below are some recent stories that have been added to the Marine Science channel on Newswise, including expert commentary on the Titan submersible.

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Supported by his Early Career Research Program award, physicist Junjie Zhu’s work at the CERN Large Hadron Collider led to the first-ever evidence of two rare but important physics processes. These interactions produce the particles responsible for nuclear decay.

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Electrons inside crystals interact closely with phonons, defined as the discrete unit of crystal vibrations.

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New research findings published in Physical Review Letters provides theorists with new input for calculating how much gluons—the gluelike particles that hold quarks together within protons and neutrons—contribute to a proton’s spin.

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Recent data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider show how three distinct variations of particles called upsilons “melt,” or dissociate, in the hot particle soup that existed in the very early universe. The results from the STAR experiment support the theory that this hot matter is a soup of “free” quarks and gluons. Measuring how different upsilons dissociate helps scientists learn about the quark-gluon plasma.

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Bottomonium mesons consist of a heavy bottom quark bound to an antibottom quark, and the two quarks can be bound loosely, more tightly, and very tightly (creating the smallest bottomonium meson). New calculations that predict the temperature at which these mesons will melt show that the smallest bottomonium particles can stay intact at very high temperatures. This may explain why collisions at different particle accelerators produce different numbers of bottomonium particles.

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In a study published in Nature Astronomy today, a team of researchers from the University of Naples “Federico II”, the University of Wroclaw, and the University of Bergen examined a quantum-gravity model of particle propagation in which the speed of ultrarelativistic particles decreases with rising energy.

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Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) have outlined a new optical communication protocol that exploits spatial patterns of light for multi-dimensional encoding in a manner that does not require the patterns to be recognised, thus overcoming the prior limitation of modal distortion in noisy channels.

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A team led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities physicists has discovered a new way to search for axions, hypothetical particles that could help solve some of nature’s most puzzling mysteries.

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Theorists have calculated how quickly a melted soup of quarks and gluons—the building blocks of protons and neutrons—transfers its momentum to heavy quarks. The calculation will help explain experimental results showing heavy quarks getting caught up in the flow of matter generated in heavy ion collisions.

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Jefferson Lab’s Superconducting Radiofrequency Operations team builds parts for accelerators around the world. Now, the team has achieved certification for its quality management system, signifying that the system meets the rigorous standards set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in its ISO 9001: 2015 standard.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has given the greenlight for the MOLLER experiment to begin procurement of key components with its granting of Critical Decision-3A (CD-3A): Approve Long Lead Procurements. The determination allows the MOLLER project at Jefferson Lab to begin spending $9.14 million for long-lead procurements of critical items for which designs are complete. The MOLLER collaboration formed in 2006, and more than 100 physicists from more than 30 institutions are now involved. MOLLER will make a measurement of the electron’s weak charge that is five times more precise than any before. The electron’s weak charge is essentially how much influence the weak force exerts on the electron.

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Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering are working with scientists from the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) on a U.S. Department of Energy project to develop particle detectors that are sensitive enough to find these particles. The research, funded by a $350,000 grant, is part of a greater effort by the Department of Energy to explore the development of superconducting quantum detectors.

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After years of pioneering work, researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have completed the detector towers that will soon sit at the heart of the SuperCDMS SNOLAB dark matter detection experiment.

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Neutrinos are subatomic particles produced in many types of radioactive decays, including in nuclear reactors. Because neutrinos interact with matter extremely weakly, they are impossible to shield. The SNO+ experiment has just shown that a detector filled with simple water can detect neutrinos from nuclear reactors, even though the neutrinos create only tiny signals in the detector.

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Rouven Essig is a theoretical particle physicist at Stony Brook University. He conceives new experiments and detection methods in the search for knowledge about dark matter.

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From a nanoscale grain of platinum, researchers made a first step in developing a tool that enables them to characterize the materials with a new level of detail, ultimately producing the best materials for the hydrogen production and use.

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The start of this year’s physics run at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) also marks the start of a new era. For the first time since RHIC began operating at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2000, a brand new detector, known as sPHENIX, will track what happens when the nuclei of gold atoms smash into one another at nearly the speed of light. RHIC’s STAR detector, which has been running and evolving since 2000, will also see some firsts in Run 23.

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Suying Jin, who is entering her sixth and planned final year as a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics, won Princeton University’s honorific Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Fellowship for the 2023-24 academic year.

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Some mesons (quark-antiquark pairs) that emerge from a hot soup of matter generated in collisions of atomic nuclei appear to have a preferential “global spin alignment.” The spin preference cannot be explained by conventional mechanisms. A new model suggests that local fluctuations in the strong force may play a role in triggering the preference. The global spin alignment measurements may give scientists a new way to study local fluctuations in the strong force, which is the strongest and least understood of the four fundamental forces in nature.

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Brianna Romasky – who attended community college before moving to Australia, returning to the U.S. and enrolling at Rutgers–New Brunswick – is focused on plasma-based particle acceleration.