news 2024

Researchers from TU Wien (Vienna, Austria) and Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) have created an extremely exotic state of matter. Its atoms have a diameter a hundred times larger than usual. A crystal is an arrangement of atoms that repeats itself in space, in regular intervals: At every point, the crystal looks exactly the same.

Is nature really as strange as quantum theory says - or are there simpler explanations? Neutron measurements at TU Wien prove: It doesn't work without the strange properties of quantum theory. Can a particle be in two different places at the same time? In quantum physics, it can: Quantum theory allows objects to be in different states at the same time - or more precisely: in a superposition state, combining different observable states.

Looking under the microscope, a group of cells slowly moves forward in a line, like a train on the tracks. The cells navigate through complex environments. A new approach by researchers involving the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) now shows how they do this and how they interact with each other.

A team of researchers led by Philip Walther at the University of Vienna carried out a pioneering experiment where they measured the effect of the rotation of Earth on quantum entangled photons. The work, just published in Science Advances , represents a significant achievement that pushes the boundaries of rotation sensitivity in entanglement-based sensors, potentially setting the stage for further exploration at the intersection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Normally, thermal radiation is a product of randomness, described by the laws of statistical physics. TU Wien and the University of Manchester show that it can also be controlled. When a piece of metal is made to glow, its colour depends solely on its temperature. The material, the geometry, the structure of its surface - none of these details matters.

Waves carry information about their surroundings. An exact theory has now been developed at TU Wien - with astonishing results that can be used for technical purposes. No matter whether ultrasound is used to study the body, radar systems to study airspace or seismic waves to study the interior of our planet: You are always dealing with waves that are deflected, scattered or reflected by their surroundings.

Physicists at TU Graz have calculated how suitable molecules can be stimulated by infrared light pulses to form tiny magnetic fields. If this is also successful in experiments, the principle could be used in quantum computer circuits. When molecules are irradiated with infrared light, they begin to vibrate due to the energy supply.

Due to the complex structures of microporous crystals known as MOFs, reliable simulations of their properties have been difficult until now. Machine learning provides the solution. Hydrogen storage, heat conduction, gas storage, CO2 and water sequestration - metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have extraordinary properties due to their unique structure in the form of microporous crystals, which have a very large surface area despite their small size.

A simple concept of decay and fission of "magnetic quivers" helps to clarify complex quantum physics and mathematical structures.

Launched last year, ESA's Euclid space telescope has already been delivering data for almost a year. The first scientific results are being published today. They show that the new instrument is capable of detecting a representative sample of all galaxies in the universe. For example, a study led by the University of Innsbruck was able to identify over 600 previously unknown dwarf galaxies in the Perseus galaxy cluster .

Researchers at the University of Innsbruck have presented a new method for planning computing operations on a quantum computer. A generative machine learning model is used to find a suitable sequence of quantum gates to execute a quantum operation. The study, which has now been published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence , is an important step towards exploiting the full potential of quantum computers .

To grow their roots, plants feel gravity - ISTA scientists take a close look Using the force of gravity, roots weave their way through the soil to provide a plant with both structural support and essential nutrients. Anastasia Teplova from the Friml group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) investigates the mechanism behind this process.

New chemical reaction with potential applications in medicinal chemistry A team of chemists from the University of Vienna, led by Nuno Maulide, has achieved a significant breakthrough in the field of chemical synthesis, developing a novel method for manipulating carbon-hydrogen bonds. This groundbreaking discovery provides new insights into the molecular interactions of positively charged carbon atoms.

Slow electrons are used in cancer therapy as well as in microelectronics. It is very hard to observe how they behave in solids. But scientists at TU Wien have made this possible. Electrons can behave very differently depending on how much energy they have. Whether you shoot an electron with high or low energy into a solid body determines which effects can be triggered.

Special thorium-containing crystals, developed over many years at TU Wien, were crucial in tracking down the long-sought thorium transition. Emerald, ruby, amethyst and many other gemstones have one thing in common: they consist of a perfectly regular crystal structure into which foreign atoms are incorporated in low concentrations.

The "thorium transition", which physicists have been looking for for decades, has now been excited for the first time with lasers. This paves the way for revolutionary high precision technologies, including nuclear clocks. Physicists have been hoping for this moment for a long time: for many years, scientists all'around the world have been searching for a very specific state of thorium atomic nuclei that promises revolutionary technological applications.

An international collaboration of researchers, led by Philip Walther at University of Vienna, have achieved a significant breakthrough in quantum technology, with the successful demonstration of quantum interference among several single photons using a novel resource-efficient platform. The work published in the prestigious journal Science Advances represents a notable advancement in optical quantum computing that paves the way for more scalable quantum technologies.

In the COSINUS research project, an international team involving TU Wien and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) is searching for evidence of dark matter. The large-scale experiment is now starting in Italy . How can we understand dark matter? It probably makes up around 85% of the mass in the universe, but what it is and what it consists of is still one of the biggest and most difficult questions in modern physics.

Astrophysicists were able to quantify the mass loss of stars via their stellar winds An international research team led by a researcher from the University of Vienna has for the first time directly detected stellar winds from three Sun-like stars by recording the X-ray emission from their astrospheres, and placed constraints on the mass loss rate of the stars via their stellar winds.

The laser-based technology developed at TU Graz enables the continual real-time analysis of air pollutants and their interaction with other gases and sunlight. Sunlight has a major influence on chemical processes. Its high-energy UV radiation in particular is strongly absorbed by all materials and triggers photochemical reactions of the substances present in the air.