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Physics - Electroengineering - 24.09.2020

The Return of the Spin Echo
If the spins of phosphorus atoms in silicon are cleverly excited with microwave pulses, a so-called spin echo signal can be detected after a certain time. Surprisingly, this spin echo does not occur only once, but a whole series of echoes can be detected.

Physics - Materials Science - 17.09.2020

"Honey, I shrunk the detector"
Silicon chip (approx. 3 mm x 6 mm) with multiple detectors. The fine black engravings on the surface of the chip are the photonics circuits interconnecting the detectors (not visible with bare eyes). In the background a larger scale photonics circuit on a silicon wafer. Researchers have developed the world's smallest ultrasound detector Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Helmholtz Zentrum München have developed the world's smallest ultrasound detector.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 09.09.2020

Revealing the secrets of high-energy cosmic particles
P-ONE: Initiative for a new, large-scale Neutrino Observatory in the Pacific Ocean The "IceCube" neutrino observatory deep in the ice of the South Pole has already brought spectacular new insights into cosmic incidents of extremely high energies. In order to investigate the cosmic origins of elementary particles with even higher energies, Prof. Elisa Resconi from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now started an international initiative to build a neutrino telescope several cubic kilometers in size in the northeastern Pacific.

Physics - 27.08.2020

Migrating through the Cell Membrane
Interdisciplinary Research Team at Freie Universität Develops New Technology for Observing the Organization of the Cell Membrane No 145/2020 from Aug 27, 2020 An interdisciplinary research group at the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Freie Universität Berlin has investigated the nanoscopic organization of the cell membrane.

Health - Physics - 21.08.2020

New insights into lung tissue in Covid-19 disease
Researchers led by Göttingen University develop new three-dimensional imaging technique to visualize tissue damage in severe Covid-19 Physicists at the University of Göttingen, together with pathologists and lung specialists at the Medical University of Hannover, have developed a three-dimensional imaging technique that enables high resolution and three-dimensional representation of damaged lung tissue following severe Covid-19.

Physics - 29.07.2020

Strongest Coupling of Light and Matter by Synthetic Gold Crystals
Research Team Led by Freie Universität Designs New Materials No 133/2020 from Jul 29, 2020 Scientists at Freie Universität Berlin, Universität Hamburg, and Universidade Federaldo Ceará in Brazil showed that crystals of tiny gold spheres bind light. The new material shows the strongest coupling to light reported so far.

Physics - Materials Science - 29.07.2020

Tailored light inspired by nature
Researchers develop for the first time light fields using caustics that do not change during propagation / Study in "Nature Communications" Modern applications as high resolution microsopy or microor nanoscale material processing require customized laser beams that do not change during propagation. This represents an immense challenge since light typically broadens during propagation, a phenomenon known as diffraction.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 28.07.2020

How stony-iron meteorites form
SAPHiR multi-anvil press solves mystery of the solar system Meteorites give us insight into the early development of the solar system. Using the SAPHiR instrument at the Research Neutron Source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), a scientific team has for the first time simulated the formation of a class of stony-iron meteorites, so-called pallasites, on a purely experimental basis.

Physics - Materials Science - 16.07.2020

Topological control by tuning structural chirality
Chiral crystals that have a distinct handedness have recently emerged as one of  the most exciting new classes of topological materials. An international research team from institutions in Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and China has now demonstrated that their crystal handedness directly determines how quasiparticles propagate and scatter at impurities in such materials.

Physics - 13.07.2020

The moon is younger than previously thought: Planetologists from Berlin and Münster
The Moon formed a little later than previously assumed. When a Mars-sized protoplanet was destroyed in a collision with the young Earth, a new body was created from the debris ejected during this catastrophe - the Moon. Planetologists at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luftund Raumfahrt; DLR) and the University of Münster have used a new numerical model to reconstruct the time at which the event occurred - 4.425 billion years ago.

Physics - Materials Science - 10.07.2020

Cherned up to the maximum
In topological materials, electrons can display behaviour that is fundamentally different from that in 'conventional' matter, and the magnitude of many such 'exotic' phenomena is directly proportional to an entity known as the Chern number. New experiments establish for the first time that the theoretically predicted maximum Chern number can be reached - and controlled - in a real material.

Physics - Chemistry - 08.07.2020

Rock ’n’ Control
Göttingen Physicists use oscillations of atoms to control a phase transition The goal of -Femtochemistry- is to film and control chemical reactions with short flashes of light. Using consecutive laser pulses, atomic bonds can be excited precisely and broken as desired. So far, this has been demonstrated for selected molecules.

Physics - 22.06.2020

Experimentally Identifying Effective Theories in Many-Body Systems
One goal of science is to find physical descriptions of nature by studying how basic system components interact with one another. For complex many-body systems, effective theories are frequently used to this end. They allow describing the interactions without having to observe a system on the smallest of scales.

Chemistry - Physics - 18.06.2020

Researchers create a photographic film of a molecular switch
Molecular switches - they are the molecular counterparts of electrical switches and play an important role in many processes in nature. Such molecules can reversibly interconvert between two or more states and thereby control molecular processes. In living organisms, for example, they play a role in muscle contraction but also our visual perception is based on the dynamics of a molecular switch in the eye.

Physics - Astronomy / Space Science - 17.06.2020

Surprising Signal in the XENON1T Dark Matter Experiment
Scientists from the international XENON collaboration under participation of the University of Münster announced today that data from their XENON1T, the world's most sensitive dark matter experiment, show a surprising excess of events. The scientists do not claim to have found dark matter. Instead, they say to have observed an unexpected rate of events, the source of which is not yet fully understood.

Physics - Materials Science - 17.06.2020

A fresh twist in chiral topology
Electrons in "chiral crystals", solid-state materials with definite "handedness", can behave in unexpected ways. An interdisciplinary team from research institutions in Germany and China has realized now a theoretically predicted peculiar electronic state in a chiral compound, PtGa, from the class of topological materials.

Physics - 12.06.2020

Radioactive cloud over Europe had civilian background: Isotope measurements on air filters
A mysterious cloud containing radioactive ruthenium-106, which moved across Europe in autumn 2017, is still bothering Europe's radiation protection entities. Although the activity concentrations were innocuous, they reached up to 100 times the levels of what had been detected over Europe in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident.

Health - Physics - 11.06.2020

New Strategies for Virus Inhibition
Highly flexible or spiky nanosystems by Berlin researchers open the door for new antiviral options against influenza viruses No 098/2020 from Jun 11, 2020 Berlin researchers have applied two new strategies based on multivalent nanosystems for making influenza A viruses (IAV) innocuous. The decisive factor in the development of these new strategies against influenza was the cooperation between scientists from different disciplines - chemistry, physics, virology, and imaging - the collaborative partners of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt University Berlin, and the Robert Koch Institute.

Physics - Electroengineering - 11.06.2020

Macroscopic quantum interference in an ultra-pure metal
That visible light holds the character of a wave can be demonstrated in simple optics experiments, or directly witnessed when rainbows appear in the sky. Although the subtle laws of quantum mechanics, that is, wave mechanics, ultimately govern all the processes of electron transportelectrons in solids, their wave-like nature of the electrons is not often apparent to the casual observer.

Physics - 04.06.2020

’Whispering gallery’ effect controls electron beams with light
Research team led by the University of Göttingen succeeds in coupling free electrons to optical resonators When you speak softly in one of the galleries of St Paul's cathedral, the sound runs so easily around the dome that visitors anywhere on its circumference can hear it. This striking phenomenon has been termed the -whispering gallery- effect, and variants of it appear in many scenarios where a wave can travel nearly perfectly around a structure.