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Light and matter in sync

Posted by Ankita Anirban | Categories: ,

Light and matter in sync

In 1934, Pavel Cherenkov discovered that when charged particles surpass the speed of light in matter, they generate an electromagnetic shockwave. A well-known analogue for this phenomenon is a sonic boom – shockwaves of sound generated when jet planes surpass the speed of sound in air. This new understanding of light–matter interactions led Cherenkov to share the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm for his experiment and their theory. The Vavilov–Cherenkov effect has been studied extensively since then and besides being of fundamental science importance, it has led to applications in particle identification, medical imaging, quantum cascade lasers, optical frequency combs, laser-driven particle acceleration, and other areas of nonlinear optics and nanophotonics  … Read more

Achieving a Bose–Einstein Condensate from my living room during lockdown

Posted by Ankita Anirban | Categories: , ,

Achieving a Bose–Einstein Condensate from my living room during lockdown

During the COVID-19 lockdown which led to the closure of many labs around the world, Dr. Amruta Gadge, a postdoctoral researcher in the Quantum Systems and Devices group at the University of Sussex*, made headlines for remotely setting up a Bose–Einstein condensate from her living room. Here, she tells us her story.  Read more

Behind the paper: CP violation in neutrino oscillations

Posted by Zoe Budrikis | Categories: , ,

Behind the paper: CP violation in neutrino oscillations

In 1967, Andrei Sakharov proposed conditions required in the early universe for generating matter and anti-matter at different rates, to explain the abundance of matter in our universe today. Charge-Parity (CP) violating processes are essential under these conditions. Measurements of the CP violation in quarks, first performed in 1964, are too small to explain the difference, and finding other sources of CP violation is an ongoing quest in the physics community. In April 2020, the T2K collaboration published a paper in Nature suggesting large CP violation in the leptonic sector, namely in neutrino oscillations. Some of the researchers involved in the project tell us their story.  Read more

What’s the difference between a supernova and a fork?

Posted by Zoe Budrikis | Categories: ,

What’s the difference between a supernova and a fork?

Francesca Chadha-Day is a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, studying particle astrophysics and axion phenomenology. She is also a comedian. Here, Fran writes for us about her experience of stand-up comedy.   … Read more

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The matter that apparently doesn’t matter

Posted by Iulia Georgescu | Categories:

The matter that apparently doesn’t matter

We interact with ordinary matter all the time. It is the bed in which you wake up in the morning and the food that you eat for breakfast. It is the people we love and the pets we often love even more. It is us. Being fairly prominent stuff, ordinary matter is often referred to as ‘the matter that matters’ and without doubt deserves our attention. But we should not forget that it only makes up 5% of our Universe, the remainder of which is dark matter. Indeed, dark matter crosses paths with all of us but unless you’re a physicist it is unlikely to have crossed your mind.  Read more

There was nothing sane about Chernobyl

Posted by Iulia Georgescu | Categories:

There was nothing sane about Chernobyl

The new British-American miniseries ‘Chernobyl’, aired on HBO and Sky in May and June 2019, takes you on a dark ride through the insanity that accompanied the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl. Five haunting episodes depict the night and aftermath of the explosion of reactor 4, using the style of disaster films to vividly show how the combination of bad nuclear reactor design, irresponsible scientists, a totalitarian system and human error led to one of the biggest nuclear disasters, with devastating consequences within and outside the Iron Curtain.    … Read more