https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Atoms in a material are rarely still. They jiggle back and forth in collective lattice vibrations known as phonons. Their motion can also carry a rotational element: In 2023, scientists at PSI experimentally proved the existence of chiral phonons, which exhibit handedness depending on which way they rotate. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-reversible-electric-persistent-chiral-phonon.html Condensed Matter Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:00:07 EDT news707998681 Researchers have completely suppressed superconductivity in magic-angle graphene by screening interactions between electrons, helping resolve a long-running debate about the origin of the phenomenon. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-magic-angle-graphene-evidence-unconventional.html Superconductivity Fri, 04 Sep 2026 17:20:03 EDT news707746981 Heat, it turns out, has a memory. A cooling cup of coffee may not seem particularly thoughtful. At the scale of a kitchen, heat appears to follow a straightforward rule: it moves from warmer places to cooler ones. Leave the cup unattended long enough, and the disappointing result offers convincing evidence that this rule works. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-memory-theoretical-framework-track.html General Physics Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:00:08 EDT news707644802 A collaborative research team has successfully visualized in real space the ultrafast optical modulation of hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs) in a van der Waals heterostructure composed of hBN and WS2. The research is published in the journal Nano Letters, and was led by Kazuki Kamada of the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS) and Osaka Metropolitan University, along with Dr. Jun Nishida, assistant professor at IMS, and Takashi Kumagai, associate professor at IMS. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-femtosecond-nano-imaging-reveals-ultrafast.html Nanophysics Mon, 31 Aug 2026 18:00:07 EDT news707405941 Electrons, particles that carry a negative electric charge, typically move through materials. At low densities and temperatures, however, the electrical repulsion between them can overpower their tendency to move, prompting them to arrange themselves into ordered patterns known as Wigner crystals. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-reveals-internal-motion-electron-crystals.html Condensed Matter Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:00:03 EDT news706964413 In the hunt for one of nature's most elusive substances—dark matter, which makes up 85% of all matter in the universe—scientists are going to extremes. Deep underground and chilled to near absolute zero, the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) SNOLAB—one of the world's most sensitive dark matter searches—has begun collecting its first scientific data. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-deep-underground-supercdms-dark-cryogenic.html General Physics Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:40:06 EDT news707048521 Efficiently controlling heat generation has become a major challenge as the semiconductors used in smartphones, computers and similar devices have become higher-performing and more miniaturized. The way heat is transmitted is determined by the vibration of the atoms that constitute a material, but it is not easy to directly examine, at the atomic scale, how neighboring atoms vibrate in coordination with one another. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-vibrations-neighboring-atoms-atomic-scale.html Condensed Matter Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:20:03 EDT news706961521 Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have demonstrated a promising new way to protect fragile quantum information using nothing but mechanical vibrations—essentially extremely small sound waves. The breakthrough, which comes from the lab of Marko Lončar, Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering, paves a path toward compact, sound-based quantum networks on chips, as well as hybrid quantum systems that combine many different types of quantum bits, or qubits. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-duty-quantum.html Quantum Physics Tue, 25 Aug 2026 17:00:03 EDT news706882021 Quasiparticles arise from the complex interaction of many particles in solids; for example, we describe lattice vibrations in crystals as phonons. Fractons are exotic quasiparticles that occur at the vertices of magnetic domain walls between different spin orders. What makes them special is that they are virtually immobile and can only be displaced by other fractons. In theory, this limited mobility could be exploited to robustly store quantum information. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-realistic-solid-state-fractons-quantum.html Condensed Matter Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:20:03 EDT news706535537 Chiral phonons are groups of atoms that move in a circular direction when excited by an energy source, such as heat. As the phonons move through a material, they propagate that circular motion, or angular momentum, through the material. The angular momentum serves as the source of spin, and the chirality dictates the direction of the spin, enabling spin control in spintronics. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-electric-field-reverses-phonon-chirality.html Condensed Matter Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:00:06 EDT news705151382 Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have demonstrated a new quantum-dot mechanism that could significantly expand the reach of light-driven chemistry. By introducing magnetic manganese dopants into semiconductor quantum dots, the team created an ultrafast spin-exchange pathway that captures hot-electron energy before it is lost as heat and uses it to drive chemical reduction. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-magnetic-dopants-quantum-dots-chemical.html Nanophysics Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:40:03 EDT news705054241 Researchers in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have discovered a new type of quantum light emitter in diamonds that could help overcome a number of challenges facing quantum technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-diamond-newfound-defect-vibrations-hinder.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:40:08 EDT news704711281 Plants need nitrogen fertilizers, which are usually ammonia-based. Ammonia is therefore one of the most important chemical products. However, its production is currently extremely energy-intensive. An international team from TU Wien and Soochow University in China has developed a novel catalyst that can convert nitrate from wastewater into ammonia much more efficiently than before—powered by sunlight and about 1.5 volts. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-gold-mxene-catalyst-nitrate-ammonia.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:00:08 EDT news704544061 A new concept from Warwick researchers could help solve one of the biggest challenges to building large-scale quantum computers: enabling communication between vast numbers of quantum bits (qubits) over long distances across a single chip. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-chip-architecture-built-vibrations.html Condensed Matter Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:10:01 EDT news704387701 Efficient heat management in solids is key to advancing the next generation of electronics. However, wave-like heat movement—known as phonon focusing—had been observed only at extremely low, or cryogenic, temperatures, limiting its study and practical use. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-room-temperature.html Condensed Matter Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:30:01 EDT news704041322 Physicists have long puzzled over a strange contradiction inside a family of minerals called rutile oxides. These materials all share the same crystal structure—but while some of them, like titanium dioxide, are firmly insulating, others, like ruthenium dioxide, conduct electricity like a metal. So far, physicists have had little idea of why this happens. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-metallic-rutile-oxides-cooling.html Condensed Matter Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:00:09 EDT news702627994 An international research team has demonstrated that the intrinsic disorder of the compound semiconductor CuInSnS₄ can be exploited to influence its optical properties. While the atomic vibrations also sense the local disorder, their response is averaged over many different local environments and therefore appears isotropic, as expected for a cubic crystal. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-disorder-optics-compound-semiconductors.html Condensed Matter Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:10:02 EDT news701968441 Physicists at Paderborn University have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated the so-called "return" of Rabi oscillations in semiconductor quantum dots. The phenomenon, which was first predicted theoretically in 2007, describes the decrease in the emission intensity of the quantum dots, which are initially damped by interactions with the lattice vibrations of a solid (phonons). https://phys.org/news/2026-06-semiconductor-quantum-dots-reawaken-rabi.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:00:04 EDT news701694781 In an international experiment, researchers observed Jahn–Teller polarons—quasiparticles that could play an important role in future ultrafast spintronic devices. These polarons emerged within the crystal lattice of cobalt oxide that had been activated by carefully tailored laser pulses. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-laser-pulses-capture-unexplored-polaronic.html Condensed Matter Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:40:02 EDT news701617923 Whenever someone asks ChatGPT a question, heat is generated somewhere in the server room—a data center. When an electric vehicle battery generates heat during operation, the heat must be managed continuously. Manufacturing processes also generate large amounts of waste heat, much of which is simply released into the atmosphere. But what if we could convert this waste heat back into electricity? Recently, a research team in Korea brought this possibility one step closer to reality. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nanotube-based-thermoelectrics-pathway-energy.html Nanophysics Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:20:01 EDT news701361841 How does light turn into motion within a metal? A team of researchers from European XFEL, the University of Potsdam and other participating institutions has shown that ultrashort optical laser pulses can trigger extremely rapid lattice vibrations in periodically layered metal structures—not primarily by heating the atomic lattice, but through the pressure exerted by hot electrons. The results are published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-laser-pulses-layered-metals-vibrating.html Condensed Matter Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:10:03 EDT news701018641 An international team of researchers has reported a major advance in understanding quantum dynamics in semiconductor materials. They directly observed how excitons and phonons evolve together in perovskite nanocrystals, revealing a fully coherent quantum dance between light-induced electronic excitations and crystal lattice vibrations. They published their findings in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-physicists-synchronized-quantum-excitons-phonons.html Condensed Matter Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:40:01 EDT news700242962 Waves of light and sound interact to drive electronic and structural changes in a perovskite crystal. At the atomic scale, nothing is ever truly still. Materials that appear perfectly rigid and motionless to the naked eye are in fact swarms of vibrating atoms. This motion is generally random and uncoordinated, but with the right input, the atoms in certain materials will start to move together, vibrating in sync. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pulses-uncover-higgs-mode-reshapes.html Condensed Matter Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:00:01 EDT news699875875 For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What goes up must come down. Physical laws like these govern all of the natural world—except for the tiny internal components of today's microprocessors, which operate according to the unique and complicated rules of quantum physics. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-chip-scale-acoustic-atom-imitate.html Condensed Matter Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:00:04 EDT news699704401 When a singer belts out a tune while a guitar player strums along, sound waves travel through the air, driving collective oscillations of the molecules within. Meanwhile, at the quantum level, something similar is going on. Atoms inside materials, everything from our bodies to metals and more, naturally jiggle around, creating tiny vibrational waves that ripple across the material. These vibrations are known as phonons: the quantum version of sound waves. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-tuning-quantum-acoustic-devices-sensors.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 25 May 2026 11:40:02 EDT news698925147 Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have demonstrated, for the first time, a single quantum of vibrational energy interacting with a single atomic spin, seeding a pathway to quantum technologies that use sound as an information carrier, instead of light or electricity. The results are published in Nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-good-vibrations-quantum-communications-couple.html Quantum Physics Sun, 10 May 2026 17:00:03 EDT news697300032 A two-dimensional lamellar crystal composed of atomically thin layers of lead iodide (PbI2) could be used to manufacture a new generation of circuits that use light and mechanical vibrations (rather than electrons) to transmit information in the terahertz frequency range. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-inexpensive-material-compresses-paving-photonic.html Condensed Matter Tue, 05 May 2026 15:50:01 EDT news697212182 Electronic nematicity is a phase of some crystalline solids in which electrons' collective properties, such as charge or spin densities, organize themselves into ordered patterns, lowering the crystal's rotational symmetry. This phase is found across a wide range of diverse materials, making nematicity crucial to understanding emergent solid-state phenomena, such as unconventional superconductivity and magnetism. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-elastic-nematic-crystals-disordered.html General Physics Tue, 05 May 2026 13:30:01 EDT news697205041 Researchers at McGill University have developed a novel device that generates sound-like particles known as phonons at extremely cold temperatures. The technology could be used to create phonon lasers, with possible applications in communications and medical diagnostics. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ultracold-quantum-device-electricity-stranger.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:00:04 EDT news696519901 A novel approach for realizing the one-way quantum synchronization of phonons has been proposed by three theoretical physicists at RIKEN. Importantly, this method is remarkably resilient against practical challenges such as imperfections and environmental noise. Their paper, "Nonreciprocal quantum synchronization," is published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-phonon-synchronization-survive-noise-defects.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:40:01 EDT news696238622