NEWS RELEASES

In a paper published January 21 in Nature, a team led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have run complex numerical simulations of plasma flows that, while leading to turbulence, also develop structured flows due to the formation of large-scale jets.

Auburn University physics PhD student Jessica Eskew has been awarded a prestigious U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Fellowship to tackle one of the most critical challenges in fusion energy: controlling runaway electrons that can damage future fusion power plants. Through extended on-site research at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, Eskew will study how precisely manipulating magnetic structures in hot plasmas can enable safer, more reliable fusion devices, reinforcing Auburn Physics’ growing national impact in plasma and fusion research.

What if you could create new materials just by shining a light them? To most, this sounds fantastical, but to physicists investigating Floquet engineering, this is the goal. With a periodic drive, like light, it’s possible to ‘dress up’ the electronic structure of any material, altering its fundamental properties – such as turning a simple semiconductor into a superconductor. While experimentally proven, light-driven Floquet requires strong drives that almost vaporize the material while achieving only modest effects. But researchers have now managed to achieve strong Floquet effect with a periodic drive just a fraction of the power required for modest light-driven Floquet – using excitons. This alternative method pavers the way to applied Floquet physics and thereby exciting novel quantum devices and applications.  

I• A protective coating technique using silver makes solid electrolytes five times more resistant to cracking and makes imperfections that exist better able to block lithium ions lodging themselves and then expanding inside the electrolyte, Stanford researchers have discovered.

• Lithium intrusion of the electrolyte, which can lead to battery failure, is a major obstacle in developing lithium metal batteries that could be safer, last longer, and charge faster than current lithium-ion batteries.

• While promising in lab tests, the technique still needs validation at commercial scale with full battery cells over thousands of charge cycles, which the researchers are working on. They are also exploring applications to different solid electrolytes, like those based on sulfur, and applications beyond lithium batteries, like sodium-based cells.

Researchers demonstrated a new method of cooling trapped ions using chip-based systems, which could enable more stable and scalable quantum computers and quantum sensors.

Columbia researchers Sebastian Will and Nanfang Yu combine optical tweezers with metasurfaces to trap over 1,000 atoms—with the potential to capture hundreds of thousands more. 

U.S. nuclear energy faces fuel supply chain vulnerabilities, with tight uranium supplies, geopolitical risks, and rising costs threatening both existing reactors costs and advanced reactor development.

The uranium conversion stage represents a major bottleneck, with only five large-scale facilities worldwide, shrinking stockpiles, and companies hesitant to expand capacity without long-term contracts that buyers are reluctant to sign at current high prices.

Next-generation reactors will require significantly more mined uranium per ton of fuel, potentially tightening supplies for the existing nuclear fleet, which is already facing high fuel costs.