Captured a Single Electron at an Unmatched Speed

Rapid detection of individual electrons proves challenging

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Now, detecting a solitary electron with a resolution of a trillion can be achieved in a mere second. This breakthrough could be crucial for advancing new generations of quantum electronic devices.

While conventional electronic circuits are packed with numerous electrons, their interactions often diminish their efficiency and performance. Is it possible to effectively manage a single electron to create a speedy and efficient circuit that operates with one electron at a time? Masaya Kataoka from the UK’s National Institute of Physics (NPL) and his team have advanced this objective by developing highly precise techniques for electron detection.

They introduced two electrons at different locations within a thin layer of the semiconductor gallium halide arsenide. The charged particles moved rapidly toward each other. When their paths drew near, the force between the electrons caused them to diverge, altering their trajectories. The researchers tracked one of the electrons and leveraged this deflection to identify the other electrons. They managed to detect it within 6 trillion interactions, which is roughly 100 times quicker than previous methods.

“Our experiments can be regarded as electrons acting as the world’s smallest sensors, detecting the world’s smallest object,” remarks Kataoka.

Team member John Fletcher at NPL explains that interactions among electrons can occur over trillion-second intervals. With this timescale now achievable, researchers are beginning to explore what two electrons do within a device and leverage this knowledge to design new electronic innovations.

Vyacheslavs Kashcheyevs from the University of Latvia believes this work could mark a pivotal point in the creation of a new generation of electronic devices reliant on high-speed single electrons. He elaborates that a single electron is inherently a quantum entity, which means future devices may harness their quantum characteristics directly, similar to their current applications in quantum computing and communication.

Researchers envision that a single-electron device could accomplish tasks akin to those performed by quantum devices that utilize a single photon, yet it would be significantly smaller. Such electron-based devices could even be integrated onto chips for convenience, says Christian Flindt from Aalto University in Finland. He emphasizes that this detection method will serve as the foundational building blocks for these potential applications.

The findings are also expected to enhance the understanding of electrical currents. Rolf Haug from Hannover University of Leibniz, Germany, notes that the current standards used for measuring current could be refined by implementing the “electron pump” utilized by the team to inject electrons in their experiments, he states.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

I Highly Doubt the Existence of a “Nutrition Electron Microscope”

Feedback is the latest science and technology news of new scientists, the sidelines of the latest science and technology news. You can email Feedback@newscientist.com to send items you believe readers can be fascinated by feedback.

A new kind of microscope?

Science is one of the most fruitful sources of new terms. There are conditions such as “mitochondrial integration” and “quantum fluctuations” and there is no way to make sentences reliable.

Recently, there have been various scientific papers that contain the phrase “.”Nutrition Electron Microscope/Microscope“The term suggests a device for scanning broccoli, but it is completely nonsense. There are scanning electron microscopes and tunneling electron microscopes, but there are no nutritional electron microscopes.

One possible explanation was proposed by Alexander Magazinov, a software engineer who illuminates Moonlight as a watchdog for Science Publishing. He pointed to Article from 1959 in Bacteriological reviewthe text was formatted into two columns. 4 To the bottom of the pagethe words “nutrition” and “electron microscope” appear next to each other in the left and right rows. Older papers are often scanned using optical character recognition, but such software can be a pain to deal with complex formats. “Nutritional electron microscope“According to the magazine, it is “artificial for text processing.”

But the journalist on Retraction Watch I discovered another possibilitythat was it Reddit has been flagged. In Falsi, the phrases “scanning electron microscope” and “nutritional electron microscope” are very similar, and, importantly, they use almost identical letters. The only difference is a single dot, nuqta. This means that small mistakes in translating paper from Persian to English are sufficient to create a “nutritional electron microscope.”

These explanations are not mutually exclusive, and feedback is satisfied that they can explain the appearance of this phrase. The bigger question is why it lasts in published research. Are these papers not strict? Peer reviews and checksto ensure high accuracy and therefore maintain the integrity of the scientific literature? Perhaps such “tortured phrases” should be included in the checklist of warning signs that the paper may be plagiarized or fraudulent.

Readers who encounter similar tortured phrases during their viewing of technical literature are invited to submit them to their regular address.

The nun is too far away

Sometimes feedback can receive stories that feel so good. The setup is so clean and the rewards are amazingly inevitable at the same time, so we doubt ourselves. Is the reality very beautiful? And we remember that the Titanic faction was the largest ship ever on that maiden voyage when it was built and when bad things happened. Sometimes reality is melodramatic. So, I believe this story happened as explained, but it may not be.

Come to us from Charlie Watnaby. The late Father John, Charlie Watnaby, was a curator at the Science Museum in London. It is inevitably related to the issue of Scunthorpe. The difficulty of banning offensive words in online discussions when strings of the same letters can appear in harmless words such as “peacock” or “sussex.”

John’s story is, technically speaking, not an example of Scunthorpe’s problem, but it definitely contiguous to it. As Charlie explains, “On the early days of the Computing Gallery, machines were set up so that the public could enter their own words and see them on the big screen.

This may seem like an invitation to misconduct. Therefore, readers will be pleased to know that staff expect an inevitable attempt to write a torrent of filth on a big screen so that everyone can see. They drew a “long list of blasphems,” all of which were blocked.

“Everything was going well,” says Charlie, until the system was defeated by the most dangerous person possible: the computer expert. While trying to use the machine, he realized that some keystrokes did nothing. “After investigating, he was able to pull up the entire list of offence (or offensive) words on the big screen so that everyone could see.

Feedback is prepared to believe in 90% of this story, but in the absence of independent verification, it draws a line to the nun. But we are willing to do wrong about this too. If the abbey schoolchild was at the science museum on that fateful day, and if you think you remember, contact us.

Yodel-eh-oh

Senior news editor Sophie Bushwick has turned his attention to a press release entitled “.Monkeys are the best in the world Yoderer – New Research.” It describes research examining the “special anatomy” of the throats of apes and monkeys, known as vocal membranes. These membranes allow for “the same rapid transition of frequency heard in alpine yodering” but “a much more praised range”, sometimes “over three musical octaves.”

After such accumulation, there was a breathless feedback accompanied by feedback and feedback was made to find it Audio Recording A tufted cappuchin monkey. We were hoping for the diffusive appeal that sparked. Music sounds Or the focus of the Dutch rock yodeler. What we got was “Skroark Rark Eek.” And now we understand why Sophie said, “I can’t stop laughing.”

However, if you look closely, you will notice the missed opportunities. Do not hesitate to show us the “yodering” of the tufted cappuchin. However, this study also included Howler Monkey.

Have you talked about feedback?

You can send stories to feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Include your home address. This week and past feedback can be found on our website.

Source: www.newscientist.com

Physicists successfully transfer electron spin to photon

A team of physicists led by Dr. Yuan Lu of the Jean Lamour Institute at the University of Lorraine used electrical pulses to manipulate magnetic information into polarized signals. This discovery could revolutionize long-distance optical communications, including between Earth and Mars. This breakthrough involves the field of spintronics, which aims to manipulate the spin of electrons to store and process information.

Structure of SOT Spin LED: Control of emission intensity and charging current is the basis of information transfer and processing. In contrast, robust information storage and magnetic random access memory are implemented using carrier spins and their associated magnetizations in ferromagnets. The missing link between the respective fields of photonics, electronics, and spintronics is modulating the circular polarization of emitted light rather than its intensity through electrically controlled magnetization.Dynon other. demonstrated that this missing link is established in light-emitting diodes at room temperature in the absence of an applied magnetic field through the transfer of angular momentum between photons, electrons, and ferromagnets.Image credit: Dynon other., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07125-5.

Spintronics has been successfully used in magnetic computer hard drives, where information is represented by the direction of electron spin and its proxy, magnetization.

Ferromagnetic materials such as iron and cobalt have an unequal number of electrons, with their spins oriented either along or against the magnetization axis.

Electrons with spins aligned with the magnetization move smoothly in a ferromagnetic material, while electrons with spins in the opposite direction bounce. This represents binary information of 0’s and 1’s.

The resulting change in resistance is a key principle in spintronic devices, where magnetic states can be maintained indefinitely, which can be considered stored information.

Just as a refrigerator magnet requires no power to stick to a door, spintronic devices require much less power than traditional electronics.

But like pulling a fish out of water, when an electron is removed from a ferromagnetic material, the spin information is quickly lost and can no longer travel far.

This major limitation can be overcome by utilizing circularly polarized light, also known as helicity, as another spin carrier.

Just as humans used homing pigeons centuries ago to carry written communication farther and faster than on foot, the trick is to transfer the spin of an electron to a photo, a quantum of light. That’s probably true.

Such transfer is possible due to the presence of spin-orbit coupling, which causes spin information loss outside the ferromagnetic material.

The key missing link is to electrically modulate the magnetization and thereby change the helicity of the emitted light.

“The concept of spin LEDs was first proposed at the end of the last century,” Dr. Lu said.

“But to move into practical use, it must meet three important criteria: it must operate at room temperature, it does not require a magnetic field, and it must be able to be electrically controlled.”

“After more than 15 years of dedicated work in this field, our collaborative team has managed to overcome all obstacles.”

In their research, Dr. Lu and his colleagues succeeded in switching the magnetization of a spin injector using an electric pulse that uses spin-orbit torque.

The electron spin is rapidly converted into information contained in the helicity of the emitted photon, allowing seamless integration of magnetization dynamics and photonic technology.

This electrically controlled spin-to-photon conversion is currently realized with electroluminescence in light-emitting diodes.

In the future, through implementation in semiconductor laser diodes, so-called spin lasers, this highly efficient information encoding will pave the way for high-speed communication across interplanetary distances, since the polarization of light is preserved in spatial propagation. It is possible and could potentially make it possible. The fastest mode of communication between Earth and Mars.

It also has significant benefits for the development of a variety of advanced technologies on Earth, including photonic quantum communications and optical computing, neuromorphic computing for artificial intelligence, and ultra-fast and highly efficient optical transmitters for data centers and light-fidelity applications. will bring about.

“The realization of spin-orbit torque spin injectors is a decisive step in the development of ultrafast and energy-efficient spin lasers for next-generation optical communications and quantum technologies,” said Professor Nils Gerhardt of Ruhr University. ” he said.

team's work It was published in the magazine Nature.

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PA Dynon other. 2024. Optical helicity control by electromagnetic switching. Nature 627, 783-788; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07125-5

Source: www.sci.news

Rocket Lab predicts that Electron will likely return to the skies by year-end

Rocket LabHis Electron rocket will likely return to flight by the end of the year, but the work is not yet complete before the mission resumes, according to a new statement released Wednesday.

Rocket Lab announced it has received permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to resume Electron launches from its New Zealand launch facility, but that doesn’t mean regulators have given the green light. Rocket Lab must complete an investigation into the anomaly that led to the Sept. 19 mission failure and implement an FAA-approved accident investigation plan to ensure the problem is resolved.

“Rocket Lab is currently in the final stages of a thorough investigation into the root cause of the anomaly. This process includes examining an extensive fault tree to cover all potential causes of the anomaly and This includes completing a comprehensive test campaign for reproduction on the ground,” the company said in a statement.

Standard practice after a rocket launch failure is for a company-led accident investigation to be conducted under the supervision and approval of the FAA. Rocket Lab said a full review is expected to be completed “in the coming weeks.”

Rocket Lab has not said anything about the cause of the September failure that led to the loss of Capella Space’s synthetic aperture radar satellite. The problem occurred shortly after the second stage’s single-engine Rutherford engine ignited, approximately two and a half minutes after liftoff. Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a statement that given Electron’s flight history, “a failure would be a complex and extremely rare problem that has never occurred in any previous test or flight.” He just said he knew.

An anomaly occurred during Rocket Lab 41.cent Electron firing. Before the anomaly, the company had completed 20 consecutive orbital launches.

Source: techcrunch.com