News tagged with zero temperature

Physicists show standard 'quasiparticle' theory breaks down at 'quantum critical point'

A new study this week finds that "quantum critical points" in exotic electronic materials can act much like polarizing "hot button issues" in an election. Reporting in Nature, researchers from Rice Univer ...

Physics / General Physics

created Apr 25, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

'Quantum criticality': Ultracold experiments heat up quantum research

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Chicago physicists have experimentally demonstrated for the first time that atoms chilled to temperatures near absolute zero may behave like seemingly unrelated natural systems ...

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Mar 18, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (9) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Fusion researchers see frozen pellet tech as way to control ITER's plasma as well as fuel it

(PhysOrg.com) -- Heated to extreme temperatures of up to 150 million degrees Celsius, the plasma in ITER's giant experimental fusion reactor will be fed a fuel of frozen pellets of deuterium-tritium, fired ...

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 03, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (16) | comments 51

Rice's 'quantum critical' theory gets experimental boost

New evidence this week supports a theory developed five years ago at Rice University to explain the electrical properties of several classes of materials -- including unconventional superconductors -- that ...

Physics / Superconductivity

created Jan 11, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (14) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Etch-a-sketch with superconductors

Reporting in Nature Materials this week, researchers from the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Physics Department of Sapienza University of Rome have discovered a technique to 'draw' superconducting shapes ...

Physics / Superconductivity

created Aug 22, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Fleeting fluctuations in superconductivity disappear close to transition temperature

(PhysOrg.com) -- As part of an ongoing effort to uncover details of how high-temperature superconductors carry electrical current with no resistance, scientists at Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Department ...

Physics / Superconductivity

created Feb 13, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (9) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Physicists propose quantum refrigerator

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of Bristol in the UK have proposed a refrigerator that consists of just a few quantum particles -- qubits.

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Sep 01, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (6) | comments 2 | with audio podcast report

Scientists using lasers to cool and control molecules

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since audiences heard Goldfinger utter the famous line, “No, Mr. Bond; I expect you to die,” as a laser beam inched its way toward James Bond and threatened to cut him in half, lasers ...

Physics / General Physics

created Sep 20, 2010 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (8) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Seeing the quantum in chemistry: Scientists control chemical reactions of ultracold molecules

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at JILA have for the first time observed chemical reactions near absolute zero, demonstrating that chemistry is possible at ultralow temperatures and that reaction rates can be ...

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Feb 11, 2010 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (12) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Fire Meets Ice: Superhot And Supercold Remarkably Similar In The 'Fermion' World (w/ Video)

Trapping and cooling a microscopic clump of gas and then suddenly releasing it would normally result in the gas rapidly expanding outward in all directions, like a spherical bubble.

Physics / General Physics

created Aug 04, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (15) | comments 13

New insights, and a new angle, on high-temperature superconductivity

(PhysOrg.com) -- A Princeton-led research team has revealed surprising information about how electron behavior influences the conduction of electricity in a class of high-temperature superconductors. An increased ...

Physics / Superconductivity

created Jun 29, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (17) | comments 6

A microscopic view on quantum fluctuations

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics achieve direct imaging of quantum fluctuations at absolute zero temperature.

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Oct 14, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (9) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

Supersolid helium unlikely

(PhysOrg.com) -- Does helium-4 become a "supersolid" near absolute zero? What previous researchers thought might be a supersolid transition is better explained by changes in the solid's resistance to shearing, ...

Physics / General Physics

created May 17, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Shaking down frozen helium: In a 'supersolid' state, it has liquid-like characteristics

In a four-decade, Holy Grail-like quest to fully understand what it means to be in a "supersolid" state, physicists have found that supersolid isn't always super solid. In other words, this exotic state of frozen helium appears ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created May 12, 2011 | popularity 4 / 5 (2) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Of traffic jams, beach sands and the zero-temperature jamming transition

Researchers in condensed matter physics at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago have created an experimental and computer model to study how jamming, the physical process in which collections of particles ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created May 13, 2009 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0