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Khabre desk
Recent reporting, analysis and explainers from the Physics desk.
science
The STAR Collaboration measured about 20% lower yields of recoiling charged hadrons and jets in high-activity than low-activity oxygen–oxygen collisions at RHIC. The result provides evidence for jet quenching in this relatively small collision system.
science
A Physical Review Letters study presents a first-principles framework for calculating internal conversion in optically active spin defects. The authors report quantitative agreement with experiments for the NV− centre in diamond and identify a previously overlooked nonradiative channel affecting a divacancy triplet lifetime in silicon carbide.
science
Researchers report a helicene molecule that rotates directionally when voltage is applied, with the direction reversing when voltage polarity changes. Above a threshold, rotation enhances current through the molecule, and stretching or compressing it tunes that threshold.
science
A Nature study used helical edge modes as a spin-selective scanning tunnelling microscopy probe to map signatures of d-wave altermagnetism on the surface of KV₂Se₂O. The researchers report evidence from both real-space and momentum-space measurements.
science
Researchers operated a thorium-229 nuclear clock by using absorption in a crystal to steer the laser probing the nuclei. They also used the clock to search for oscillations that could be caused by ultralight dark matter.
science
A study used roughly 2-ps electrical pulses to probe intrinsic current limits in thin films of NbN and YBa₂Cu₃O₇. NbN showed a sharp depairing onset at about 2.2 times its conventional critical current density, while YBa₂Cu₃O₇ lost superconductivity gradually as current increased.
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A 13-spin trapped-ion simulator reproduced string breaking in a one-dimensional gauge-theory model. The experiment found that simulated charge pairs formed near the string’s edges and spread towards its centre when string tension was present.
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CERN has begun dismantling magnet sections near the ATLAS and CMS experiments as part of the LHC’s third long shutdown. The work prepares for new niobium-tin inner triplets designed to produce magnetic fields about 40% stronger than those of the current magnets.
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Researchers compared two room-temperature 176Lu+ optical frequency references and measured a fractional frequency difference consistent with zero. Each reference had an evaluated systematic uncertainty near 1 × 10−19.
science
Researchers detected the low-energy nuclear resonance of thorium-229 using a continuous-wave laser and absorption measurements rather than slow fluorescence detection. The technique provides a faster spectroscopy and feedback method for developing a solid-state nuclear clock.
science
OpenAI says its most advanced AI model produced a mathematical result involving a singularity in the Navier–Stokes equations. The case highlights why continuum fluid models need molecular descriptions at very small scales.