Molecules that convert heat into light

A class of fluorescent organic molecule has been designed that enables highly efficient light-emitting diodes to be made. The devices may turn out to be competitors to their conventional analogues.

Image caption: a, Energy diagram of a conventional organic molecule. b, Molecular structures of CDCBs. Me, methyl; Ph, phenyl.
Image source: Uoyama H., Goushi K., Shizu K., Nomura H. & Adachi C. (2012). Highly efficient organic light-emitting diodes from delayed fluorescence, Nature, 492 (7428) 234-238. DOI: 10.1038/nature11687

Simulation: Quantum leaps

Fully fledged quantum computers are still a long way off. But devices that can simulate quantum systems are proving uniquely useful.

The Exploration of Hot Nuclear Matter

Phase diagram of QCD matter in the temperature–baryon density plane. Baryons are hadrons containing three valence quarks; the most common are protons and neutrons, shown at the lower left. Colored spheres indicate individual quarks, which are not bound together in the quark-gluon plasma. RHIC (blue ovals) and LHC (green oval) explore matter with almost equal numbers of quarks and antiquarks. At lower beam energies, RHIC produces matter with a surplus of quarks, corresponding to high net baryon density. There may be a critical point (yellow circle) in the phase diagram, at the end of a line indicating a first-order phase transition.

Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Exploring the Quantum World

Researchers at JPL and Caltech have developed an instrument for exploring the cosmos and the quantum world.
This new type of amplifier boosts electrical signals and can be used for everything from studying stars, galaxies and black holes to exploring the quantum world and developing quantum computers. An amplifier is a device that increases the strength of a weak signal.
One of the key features of the new amplifier is that it incorporates superconductors—materials that allow an electric current to flow with zero resistance when lowered to certain temperatures. For their amplifier, the researchers are using titanium nitride and niobium titanium nitride, which have just the right properties to allow the pump signal to amplify the weak signal.
Although the amplifier has a host of potential applications, the reason the researchers built the device was to help them study the universe. The team built the instrument to boost microwave signals, but the new design can be used to build amplifiers that help astronomers observe in a wide range of wavelengths, from radio waves to X-rays.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

My mysterious Mr. Higgs, from The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question? by Leon Lederman

Is it Higgs?

Some considerations about the Higgs and the Tevatron results publicize today

Quantum refrigerator (brrrrrr) eQUiPèCo 25 (2012)
© Arnaldo Filippini, Peppe Liberti, Luciano Perondi, Leonardo Romei

via rangle

garyschroeder:

Dibaryon

Dibaryons are a large family of hypothetical particles that would consist of six quarks of any flavours. They are predicted to be fairly stable once formed. A number of experiments have been suggested to detect dibaryon decays and interactions. Several candidate dibaryon decays were observed but not confirmed in the 1990s. There is a theory that strange particles such as hyperons and H dibaryons could form in the interior of a neutron star, changing its mass-radius ratio in ways that might be detectable.

expose-the-light:

It’s Official: Physics Is Hard

I’m not agree (but I’m a physicist…). For example: what is a boson? We can imagine particle like Lady and the Tramp during the spaghetti eating sequence, and spaghetti like boson: spaghetti carry love between Lady and the Tramp, and boson carry interaction between particles!

P.S.: the situation is more complcated, but for a first step, I think that this is a good picture about a boson, for example.