Science Highlights

A team of scientists investigate an exotic, light-induced phase transformation within a material using advanced X-ray and laser capabilities.

Lanthanum strontium manganite (LSMO) is a quantum material that is magnetic and conducts electricity at low temperature but is nonmagnetic and an insulator at room temperature. Researchers discovered that applying voltage to LSMO in its magnetic phase causes the material to split into regions with distinct magnetic properties whose properties depend on the applied voltage. This means that both resistance and magnetism can be tuned in LSMO, creating a new path toward neuromorphic devices.

At extremely high densities, quarks are expected to form pairs, a phenomenon called color superconductivity. The strength of pairing inside a color superconductor is related to the pressure of dense matter such as neutron stars. Researchers used neutron star observations to constrain the limits of neutron star material properties at extremely high densities where matter is a color superconductor.

Researchers used solar energy to convert CO2 into a valuable chemical commodity with a two-step solar-powered process. First, electricity from solar energy combined with electrochemistry converts CO2 to ethylene. The ethylene gas stream that exits this process then feeds directly to a thermal catalytic reactor that uses heat derived from the sun to convert ethylene to butene.

Attractive metal-metal bonding occurs in a variety of molecules made of metallic atoms such as Iridium (Ir). Current theoretical and experimental methods have shown the existence of two isomers for Ir-Ir molecular systems, but researchers have not been able to predict the proportions of these two isomers or how they interact. This research combines ultrafast experimental measurements and numerical simulations to tease out key information about the two isomers in Ir-Ir complexes.

The surface features of neutron stars are largely unknown. Nuclear theorists explored mountain building mechanisms active on the moons and planets in our solar system. Some of these mechanisms suggest that neutron stars are likely to have mountains. Neutron star mountains would be much more massive than any on Earth--so massive that gravity just from these mountains could produce ripples in the fabric of space and time.

Instabilities in the plasma in a tokamak device can cause disruptions that result in rapid loss of plasma confinement and the release of large amounts of energy. Current approaches can suppress one type of disruption, tearing instabilities, after they form. Here, researchers tested a method using AI/deep reinforcement learning that instead adjusts plasma conditions in real-time to avoid these instabilities from developing in the first place.

New quantum chromodynamics (QCD) research provides physicists with the tools needed to relate the physics of specific particle collisions with the internal structure of the involved particles. These tools will help scientists relate theory and experiments into how quarks and gluons bind under the influence of QCD.