Phys.org November 19, 2024 An international team of researchers (Canada, USA – Stanford University) presented an imaging and neural rendering technique that seeks to synthesize videos of light propagating through a scene from novel, moving camera viewpoints. They used a new ultrafast imaging setup to capture a first-of-its kind, multi-viewpoint video dataset with picosecond-level temporal resolution. Combined with this dataset, they introduced an efficient neural volume rendering framework based on the transient field defined as a mapping from a 3D point and 2D direction to a high-dimensional, discrete-time signal that represented time-varying radiance at ultrafast timescales. They rendered a range […]
Researchers demonstrate universal control of a quantum dot-based system with four singlet-triplet qubits
Phys.org November 13, 2024 The coherent control of interacting spins in semiconductor quantum dots is of interest for quantum information processing and studying quantum magnetism from the bottom up. Researchers in the Netherlands demonstrated a 2 × 4 germanium quantum dot array with full and controllable interactions between nearest-neighbour spins. As a demonstration of the level of control, they defined four singlet–triplet qubits in this system and showed two-axis single-qubit control of each qubit and SWAP-style two-qubit gates between all neighbouring qubit pairs, yielding average single-qubit gate and Bell state fidelities. Combining these operations, they implemented a circuit designed to generate and […]
Scientists call for global action on microbial climate solutions
Phys.org November 11, 2024 By publishing concurrently across journals like an emergency bulletin, an international team of researchers (the Netherlands, Germany, UK, China, USA – Indiana University, University of North Carolina) not merely made a plea for awareness about climate change, instead, they demanded immediate, tangible steps that harness the power of microbiology and the expertise of researchers and policymakers to safeguard the planet for future generations. They proposed a multitude of microbe-based solutions, technologies that hold great promise and could be deployed along with other climate mitigation strategies. According to the team these solutions have not been deployed effectively […]
Scientists discover laser light can cast a shadow
Phys.org November 14, 2024 An international team of researchers (Canada, USA – Brookhaven National Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Rochester) demonstrated a laser beam acting like an object — the beam casts a shadow upon a surface when the beam is illuminated by another light source. They observed a regular shadow that could be seen by the naked eye, it followed the contours of the surface it fell on, and it followed the position and shape of the object (the laser beam). They used a nonlinear optical process involving four atomic levels of ruby. They were able to control […]
Scientists find a new way of entangling light and sound
Phys.org November 14, 2024 Entanglement in hybrid quantum systems comprised of fundamentally different degrees of freedom, such as light and mechanics, is of interest for a wide range of applications in quantum technologies. Researchers in Germany proposed engineering bipartite entanglement between traveling acoustic phonons in a Brillouin active solid-state system and the accompanying light wave by applying optical pump pulses to state-of-the-art waveguides, exciting a Brillouin Stokes process. The pulsed approach, in a system operating in a regime orthogonal to standard optomechanical setups, allowed for the generation of entangled photon-phonon pairs, resilient to thermal fluctuations. They proposed an experimental platform […]
Team creates world’s first tunable-wavelength blue semiconductor laser
Phys.org November 18, 2024 By introducing wavelength tunability, InGaN single longitudinal mode lasers can be used for pumping wavelength conversion devices with a small pump wavelength tolerance. Researchers in Japan designed a 405 nm InGaN tunable slotted laser designed and fabricated by a simple process without high-resolution lithography and epitaxial regrowth leading to continuous-wave single-mode oscillation. By current injection to active and slotted channels separately, they demonstrated a wavelength tuning range of 0.55 nm in InGaN in-plane single-mode lasers… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of November 15, 2024
01. Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world 02. Beyond wires: Bubble printing technique powers next-generation electronics 03. Physicists create tiny hurricanes of light that could transport huge amounts of data 04. Physicists reveal how layers and twists impact graphene’s optical conductivity 05. Scientists unlock mechanisms of liquid-repellent surfaces 06. MIT engineers make converting CO2 into useful products more practical 07. Nanoscale transistors could enable more efficient electronics 08. A space walking robot could build a giant telescope in space 09. In step forward for quantum computing hardware, IU physicist uncovers novel behavior […]
Beyond wires: Bubble printing technique powers next-generation electronics
Phys.org November 8, 2024 Bubble printing is a patterning method in which particles are accumulated by the convection of bubbles generated by laser focusing that enables the high-speed, high-precision patterning of various micro/nanoparticles. It is used for metallic particles and organic particles for patterning solid particles and not on the patterning of liquid particles. Researchers in Japan fabricated liquid metal wiring patterns using a bubble printing method in which eutectic gallium‒indium alloy (EGaIn) colloidal particles were fixed on a glass substrate by generating microbubbles by focusing a femtosecond laser beam on the EGaIn colloidal particles. They made the wiring conductive […]
Controlling skyrmions at room-temperature in 2D topological spin structure technology
Phys. org November 6, 2024 Room-temperature ferromagnetism in 2D van der Waals (vdW) materials, such as Fe3GaTe2 (FGaT), has garnered significant interest as a robust platform for 2D spintronic applications. Although many fundamental operations essential for the realization of 2D spintronics devices are experimentally confirmed using these materials at room temperature, the potential applications of magnetic skyrmions in FGaT systems at room temperature remain unexplored. An international team of researchers (Republic of Korea, USA – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) showed the current-induced generation of magnetic skyrmions in FGaT flakes employing high-resolution magnetic transmission soft X-ray microscopy using a mechanism based […]
Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world
MIT News November 5, 2024 A team of researchers in the US (Harvard University, MIT, Cornell University, University of Chicago) used a case where the underlying reality was governed by deterministic finite automaton to test the possibility of large language models implicitly learning world models. They proposed new evaluation metrics for world model recovery inspired by the classic Myhill-Nerode theorem from language theory and illustrated their utility in three domains: game playing, logic puzzles, and navigation. In all domains, the generative models they considered did well on existing diagnostics for assessing world models, but their evaluation metrics revealed their world […]