Daily Archives: September 24, 2021

1. Background

a. This Scholarship has been established to provide financial assistance to two PhD students who are undertaking research in School of Physics in the Faculty of Science.

b. The focus of the research will be on the quantum optics of many-body systems. The project will aim to improve the understanding of these systems and use them to generate new states of quantum light.

c. The Scholarships are funded in part by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship grant for the Project: Emergent many-body phenomena in engineered quantum optical systems.

d. The two PhD positions will be associated with two projects: the first will explore the propagation of photons through atomic ensembles, while the second will study the propagation and formation photon bound states in highly nonlinear systems.

2. Eligibility

a. The Scholarship is offered subject to the applicant having an unconditional offer of admission or being currently enrolled to study full-time in a PhD within the School of Physics, Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney.

b. Applicants must be willing to conduct research into quantum optics of many-body systems with the aim to improve the understanding of these systems and use them to generate new states of quantum light.

c. Applicants must be a domestic student.

d. Applicants must also hold at least one of the following:I. an Honours degree (First Class or Second Class Upper) or equivalent in a relevant discipline, orII. Masters degree with a substantial research component.

e. Applicants must have experience in completing a quantum physics research project and experience in coding (e.g. Python).

3. Selection Criteria

a. The successful applicants will be awarded the Scholarship on the basis of:

I. academic merit, andII. area of study and/or research proposal.

b. The successful applicants will be awarded the Scholarship on the nomination of the relevant research supervisor(s), or their nominated delegate(s).

4. Value

a. The Scholarship will provide a stipend allowance of $35,000 (fixed rate) per annum up to 3 years , subject to satisfactory academic performance.

b. The PhD recipient encouraged to complete their PhD in 3 years but may apply for an extension of the primary stipend allowance for up to 6 months.

c. Periods of study already undertaken towards the degree prior to the commencement of the Scholarship will be deducted from the maximum duration of the Scholarship excluding the potential extension period.

d. The Scholarship is for commencement in the relevant research period in which it is offered and cannot be deferred or transferred to another area of research without prior approval.

e. No other amount is payable.

f. The Scholarship will be offered subject to the availability of funding.

5. Eligibility for Progression

a. Progression is subject to attending and passing the annual progress evaluation.

6. Leave Arrangements

a. The Scholarship recipient receives up to 20 working days recreation leave each year of the Scholarship and this may be accrued. However, the student will forfeit any unused leave remaining when the Scholarship is terminated or complete. Recreation leave does not attract a leave loading and the supervisor's agreement must be obtained before leave is taken.

b. The Scholarship recipient may take up to 10 working days sick leave each year of the Scholarship and this may be accrued over the tenure of the Scholarship. Students with family responsibilities, caring for sick children or relatives, or experiencing domestic violence, may convert up to five days of their annual sick leave entitlement to carers leave on presentation of medical certificate(s). Students taking sick leave must inform their supervisor as soon as practicable.

7. Research Overseas

a. The Scholarship recipient may not normally conduct research overseas within the first six months of award.

b. The recipient is required to follow official advice from the University and Department of Foreign Affairs and Travel in light of travel restrictions due to Covid-19.

c. The Scholarship holder may conduct up to 12 months of their research outside Australia. Approval must be sought from the student's supervisor, Head of School and the Faculty via application to the Higher Degree by Research Administration Centre (HDRAC) and will only be granted if the research is essential for completion of the degree.

d. In addition, further approval may be required as outlined in the University of Sydneys Covid-19 2021 Response Plan.

e. All periods of overseas research are cumulative and will be counted towards a student's candidature. Students must remain enrolled full-time at the University and receive approval to count time away.

f. If the recipient is conducting research outside of Australia, the recipient acknowledges that the University of Sydney is not liable for any costs incurred. This includes but is not limited to: cost of travel and transfers (unless stated under section 4 (Value) of this scholarship to amount listed), delays due to travel restrictions or State and/or Federal quarantine requirements on their return to Australia.

8. Suspension

a. The Scholarship recipient cannot suspend their award within their first six months of study, unless a legislative provision applies.

b. The Scholarship recipient may apply for up to 12 months suspension of the Scholarship for any reason during the tenure of the Scholarship. Periods of Scholarship suspension are cumulative and failure to resume study after suspension will result in the award being terminated. Approval must be sought from the student's supervisor, Head of School and the Faculty via application to the Higher Degree by Research Administration Centre (HDRAC). Periods of study towards the degree during suspension of the Scholarship will be deducted from the maximum tenure of the Scholarship.

9. Changes in Enrolment

a. The Scholarship recipient must notify HDRAC and their supervisor promptly of any planned changes to their enrolment including but not limited to: attendance pattern, suspension, leave of absence, withdrawal, course transfer, and candidature upgrade or downgrade. If the award holder does not provide notice of the changes identified above, the University may require repayment of any overpaid stipend.

10. Termination

a. The Scholarship will be terminated:

I. on resignation or withdrawal of the recipient from their research degree,II. upon submission of the thesis or at the end of the award,III. if the recipient ceases to be a full-time student and prior approval has not been obtained to hold the Scholarship on a part-time basis, IV. upon the recipient having completed the maximum candidature for their degree as per the University of Sydney (Higher Degree by Research) Rule 2011 Policy,V. if the recipient receives an alternative primary stipend scholarship. In such circumstances this Scholarship will be terminated in favour of the alternative stipend scholarship where it is of higher value, VI. if the recipient does not resume study at the end of a period of approved leave, orVII. if the recipient ceases to meet the eligibility requirements specified for this Scholarship, (other than during a period in which the Scholarship has been suspended or during a period of approved leave).

b. The Scholarship may also be terminated by the University before this time if, in the opinion of the University:

I. the course of study is not being carried out with competence and diligence or in accordance with the terms of this offer,II. the student fails to maintain satisfactory progress, orIII. the student has committed misconduct or other inappropriate conduct.

c. The Scholarship will be suspended throughout the duration of any enquiry/appeal process.

d. Once the Scholarship has been terminated, it will not be reinstated unless due to University error.

11. Misconduct

a. Where during the Scholarship a student engages in misconduct, or other inappropriate conduct (either during the Scholarship or in connection with the students application and eligibility for the Scholarship), which in the opinion of the University warrants recovery of funds provided, the University may require the student to repay payments made in connection with the Scholarship. Examples of such conduct include and without limitation; academic dishonesty, research misconduct within the meaning of the Research Code of Conduct (for example, plagiarism in proposing, carrying out or reporting the results of research, or failure to declare or manage a serious conflict of interests), breach of the Code of Conduct for Students and misrepresentation in the application materials or other documentation associated with the Scholarship.

b. The University may require such repayment at any time during or after the Scholarship period. In addition, by accepting this Scholarship, the student consents to all aspects of any investigation into misconduct in connection with this Scholarship being disclosed by the University to the funding body and/or any relevant professional body.

12. Intellectual Property

a. The successful recipient of this Scholarship must complete the Student Deed Poll supplied by the University of Sydney.

13. Publications and Acknowledgement

a. The successful scholarship recipient must acknowledge the support of their scholarship in any media, publications or presentations arising from the research. This must include acknowledgement of the ARC funding and comply with the guidelines as outlined on the ARC Open Access Policy.

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Postgraduate Research Scholarship in Quantum Optics Theory - News - The University of Sydney

Black holes might be more complex than scientists have thought, according to a new study, which suggests for the first time that these mysterious objects might be exerting pressure on their environment.

Known for their extremely powerful gravitational force that sucks in everything from their vicinity, black holes were originally believed to be completely inert. In 1974, famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking discovered that these superdense objects are in fact emitting thermal radiation. A new discovery, made by a team of scientists from the University of Sussex, U.K., now hints at an even more complex nature of these massive space drains.

Astronomers Xavier Calmet and Folkert Kuipers concluded that black holes exert pressure as they studied the changes in gravitational forces caused by the behavior of quantum particles at the edge of black holes and the entropy, or the available energy, of that system

Related: Watch a supermassive black hole fest in mesmerizing new simulation (video)

As they ran their calculations over and over again, an extra figure was showing up that they had no explanation for. Eventually, they concluded this unaccounted variable must represent pressure.

"Our finding that Schwarzschild black holes [static black holes without electric charge and angular momentum] have a pressure as well as a temperature is even more exciting given that it was a total surprise," Xavier Calmet, Professor of Physics at the University of Sussex, and one of the authors of the new study, said in a statement. "I'm delighted that the research that we are undertaking at the University of Sussex into quantum gravity has furthered the scientific communities' wider understanding of the nature of black holes."

The pressure exerted by the black hole, Calmet said, is rather tiny. Still, its existence might help scientists improve their understanding of the behaviour of black holes and how they marry the rather incongruous principles of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and gravity.

"If you consider black holes within only general relativity, one can show that they have a singularity in their centres where the laws of physics as we know them must break down," Calmet said. "It is hoped that when quantum field theory is incorporated into general relativity, we might be able to find a new description of black holes."

Folkert Kuipers, a doctoral researcher in the school of Mathematical and Physical Science at the University of Sussex and the second author of the paper, added: "It is exciting to work on a discovery that furthers our understanding of black holes."Our result is a consequence of the cutting-edge research that we are undertaking into quantum physics at the University of Sussex and it shines a new light on the quantum nature of black holes."

The discovery is described in a paper published in the journal Physical Review D on Sept. 10.

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Surprise discovery suggests that black holes are more complex than thought - Space.com

Quantum light has a bright future that is being seen inthe progressive application of light at the Structured Light Laboratory of Wits University. It is redefining the future of data connectivity and heightening efficiencies in manufacturing while opening up novel scientific diagnostic tools in health care, amongst other sectors.

The Wits Structured Light Laboratory is primarily a photonics laboratory that has chosen to work in application within the field of Communications as it seeks to solve real world communications needs.

This is a laboratory for change makers with laser focus literally as here Distinguished Professor Andrew Forbes and his team of Wits School of Physics students discover, translate and innovate using patterns of light. Forbes is the youngest winner of the Gold Medal from the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP).

Photonics is enabling the next quantum leap for the world, says Forbes. We are moving into the Century of the Photon with implications of a brighter future. In the past century it was about controlling electrons, giving rise to micro-electronics (Silicon Valley and the like) but today our focus is on controlling the light. Photonic devices control this light and therefore we are steadily seeing photonics replace electronics.

The dream is to create a Silicon Valley for quantum photonics here in South Africa. He explains that while quantum mechanics is a theory that has been in existence for over a century and has given birth to disruptive technologies such as the laser and the transistor, recent advances in the engineering of quantum states have given hope for a second quantum revolution to realise new technologies.

These next level technologies include enhanced medical imaging, efficient light-harvesting materials (clean energy), secure optical communication networks, exponentially faster computers (cybersecurity), and more precise measurement systems (metrology).

The labs team of scientists broke through a catalytical barrier in 2016 when they discovered ways to increase the bandwidth of communication systems. At that time, Wits and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) demonstrated that more than 100 patterns of light in an optical communications link could potentially increase the bandwidth of communication systems by a factor of 100.

Not stopping at a factor of 100, the team went on to interrogate the next level by taking it to a factor of 1,000. With a vision to see new frontiers in communications, Forbes explains, We want to make the communication channels faster. If you can get 1,000 patterns to work in the channel and each pattern is carrying the same capacity as todays communications system, then you have instantly increased the bandwidth by 1,000.

Not satisfied just with speed, Wits brought in the toolkit of quantum light (how to control single photons) and entangled states. By bringing the two together we can make communications systems not only fast by using many patterns but also fundamentally secure by bringing in the quantum toolkit.

Issac Nape is a PhD candidate, specialising in classical and quantum optics supervised by Prof. Andrew Forbes in the Structured Light group

With everything being cyber and online it is necessary to make engagements and transactions secure. Forbes confirms the role of quantum physics in this equation, saying, Knowing that no one can break a security code is imperative. The final piece of this puzzle is to use the quantum aspects of light to make information fundamentally secure. We use the laws of physics to make data more secure so that someone would have to break the laws of nature to break the code.

Wits made a bold contribution in this space this year through pioneering a new quantum approach for sharing a secret amongst many parties, setting a new record for the highest dimensions and parties.

When you think of networks you think of many connections, many parties who wish to share information and not just two. Now we know how to do this the quantum way, he says. The result here is an example of the team pushing the state-of-the-art and bringing quantum communications closer to true network implementation.

Keshaan Singh is presently pursuing his Masters in physics and works in the Structured Light Laboratory

Quantum Technology is a new growth industry for South Africa, Africa and worldwide. Wits University has taken its first steps to enable the industry through an initiative known as WitsQ.

The initiative, says Forbes, will strategically promote and advance Quantum Technology, bringing together stakeholders that are actively involved in this specialist field and those who wish to engage in quantum-related activities.

WitsQ has a focus on the research, innovation, business, education, outreach, and ethics of quantum technologies, creating a collaborative forum that includes the sciences, engineering, social sciences/humanities, health, and business. It will also contribute to training the next generation of scientists and researchers.

One of the ultimate goals of the Wits Structured Light Laboratory is to innovate, creating new industries and companies. We are not training students but rather building a quantum work force for South Africa, says Forbes. This requires a focus that gives students a high-tech environment in which to generate their new ideas and translate them into devices, and then a business model from which they are enabled to deliver that pipeline of devices to the market a balance that will be sought through WitsQ.

We must try to maximise impact, make a lasting impression on our field, and translate that into new economies for the country. The hope is for critical commercial and economic impact for the generations to come, and one through which we see a brilliant new spectrum of light ahead, concludes Forbes.

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Wits University makes light work - Study International News

Robert J. Sawyers Quantum Night provokes a deeper contemplation into your personal relationship with the world. Zombie, psycho or genius: which one are you?

As Vanderbilt students, theres one thing we all have in commonwere nerds. Dont fight us on this just yet; odds are, every one of us can look back nostalgically to our glory days as middle school high achievers when we devoured shelves upon shelves of fiction books. As the Life Staff, were on a quest to find that feeling again, and that starts with picking up a book. Enter our candid review series: Ill Read Anything. Read on to find a novel that will help you embrace your middle school nerd again (minus the braces).

Take Dan Browns Robert Langdon series but make it Canadian, swap out cryptography, history and symbology with psychology, quantum physics and ethics and youve already got the gist of Robert J. Sawyers Quantum Night. Without giving too much away, youll also find satirical portrayals of football riots, Vladimir Putin and even the college Chad personality type (named Travis here, but we can excuse that). Its a lot.

I encountered Quantum Night towards the end of last semester, my head buried deep into psychology classes as I prepared for finals. Tired of going through slides and forcing my brain to memorize dates, terminologies and experimental procedures, I flipped through some pages and found this selection:

Well, I always said psych students were a little weird.

Its not just that, Menno replied. Psych attracts a certain kind of student: kids trying to make sense of themselves. Cheaper than therapy, you know?

As the psych student in question, I felt personally attacked. But of course, I also wanted to know what else the book has to say about usso I found out.

This sci-fi story revolves around a dapper, middle-aged psychologist named Jim Marchukerudite, polite, articulate of his values and basically an archetypal university professorsolving the mystery behind a six-month period of amnesia he experienced in his 20s. As he investigates, he meets a series of characters that each provide some clue and introduce their own psychology-related theories behind his memory loss. Having learned about many of these theories in class, I found myself exclaiming inside, Wait, thats actually based on [insert study here]!

For physics, psychology or philosophy nerds, that means names like Roger Penrose (winner of 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics), David Chalmers, Stanley Milgram, Jeremy Bentham, Daniel Denett and many more are referenced in the story. At the very least, all those theories and experiments you crammed in your brain for exams are put to use here.

The heroine of this book is his college girlfriend Kayla, a quantum physicist. Youd think shed be a way more interesting character but unfortunately, most of the time she stands on the sidelines and simply agrees with Jim when asked. Besides going to school at the same university (and having their fair share of affairs), both of them also happen to come up with their respective theories of psychopathy, which is where the science of the book continues to develop.

While Jim connects the lack of microsaccades (tiny spasms of the eyes to relax and adjust focus when staring) to the lack of empathy that creates nutjobs, Kaylas is a bit more difficult for us laypeople to understand.

She guesses that all people can be divided into one of three groups based on the number of electrons in superposition in their brains tubulin (a type of protein). People in Q1, those with only one electron in that state, have no consciousness at all and only follow others opinions without thinking. Q2 people, those with two superpositioning electrons, are self-conscious but have no empathy, therefore rendering them psychopathic. Q3, those with three, are apparently the superior people, who experience self-consciousness and empathy.

Here is where it gets more interesting: the reason behind their shared fascination towards this is that at some point, both of them were Q2s, the psychos. May want to think twice before doing or saying anything that might piss off professors.

The book also presents various methods for changing ones grouping, such as: the quantum tuning fork, the malfunction of an apparatus monitoring brain activities, general anesthesia, major head trauma the list goes on. Apparently, in this universe, there are lots of ways to change your personality, almost as easy as getting different results on your MBTIand definitely much easier than changing your zodiac sign. Way to make me anxious about every time I accidentally hit my head.

Eventually, the book escalates down a rather controversial path.

Upon realizing that they can potentially change the electron states of everyone on Earth with the universitys massive synchrotron, the good old utilitarian Jim is convinced that the only right thing to do is to turn all of the Q1s into Q3s, quadrupling the smartypants population.

Sure, current Q3s will become psychopaths, but who cares? It is for the maximum hedonistic calculus, the greatest good for the majority and all that.

While I personally found the ending underwhelming, Quantum Night was still a good read. For those wondering why the professors of your classes (and maybe some of your friends) are the way they are, check it out for a fancyand absurdtheory about their questionable behaviors.

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I'll Read Anything: Quantum Night The Vanderbilt Hustler - The Vanderbilt Hustler

Black holes devour stuff and then shrivel away over billions of years. Explaining what happens to anything that falls in explodes our current theories of physics, says cosmologist Paul Davies

By Paul Davies

Jordi Ros

PLAY a movie of an everyday scene backwards and we laugh because it is so preposterous. We can readily distinguish past from future, and only see processes that seem to move from the one to the other. Yet this bald fact of our existence what we call times arrow is, to physicists, a mystery. The laws of physics underpinning the everyday world are symmetric in time. They are reversible, working just as well backwards as forwards.

A new slant on that picture comes from the interior of a black hole. Almost half a century ago, Stephen Hawking made a startling discovery about these monsters, summoned into existence by general relativity, Albert Einsteins theory of gravity. It implied that black holes break the fundamental time symmetry of physics, destroying information and preventing, even theoretically, the reversal of a sequence of events from the future back to the past.

This has become known as the black hole information paradox. It highlights a profound disconnect between general relativity and another great pillar of modern physics, quantum theory, and stands in the way of a long-held dream a theory that unites the two.

Just recently, there have been claims that the paradox is close to a resolution. Personally, Im not so sure. But the twists and turns of this long-running saga have always contained surprises, with potentially huge consequences for our quest to better understand how the world works at the most basic level.

To see the essence of the problem, imagine a box divided in two by a membrane, with oxygen gas on one side and nitrogen on the other. If

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The black hole paradox that thwarts our understanding of reality - New Scientist

The so-called black-body was one of the first experiments that could not be reconciled with classical physics and led to quantum mechanics. A cavity that absorbed all light falling upon it was also radiant, and this could only be explained by rethinking the nature of light itself.

Musician, artist, and activist Camae Ayewa considers quantum Black bodies as potential, not as a problem. Under her Moor Mother moniker, her 2016 record Fetish Bones reviewed race riots throughout time, merging influences from punk and Sun Ra to bear witness to injustices. In her latest record, Black Encyclopedia of the Air, she invokes the same elements of time travel and witness, but with a lighter touch. She describes the album as:

a sonic mirage of prophetic soul mesmerizing tracks about memory and imprinting and the future, all of them wafting through untouched space like the ghostly cinders of a world on fire, unbound and uncharted, vast and stretching across the universe

and if one listens to the music, perhaps on a cold bench the morning of summers death, the music does waft unbound and uncharted. But this relaxed beat and shrouded mood had to transition into a release party on September 19, 2021 at The Kitchen in New York City. To solve this problem, Moor Mother and Senior Curator Lumi Tan conceived an event that predominantly recruited other artists to build experiential layers that climaxed in Moor Mothers performance a non-narrative program unified by strength and eroticism that transcended sexuality.

AnteloperPhoto by Paula Court

Anteloper, the Brooklyn-based duo of Jaimie Branch and Jason Nazary, kicked off the evening transforming noise into submersive trance. Their opening sequences were body-shaking, hyper-amplified cacophony, but the duo settled into rhythm, synth, and trumpet structures as our audience ears adjusted. For the first few minutes, my mind focused on the discomfort of the extreme volume, but I was surprised to notice my body loved the music, picking up on oblique rhythms and rocking subconsciously to the beat. Over the course of the set, more and more people joined in, relaxing into an embrace of blazing sound that seemed part of a burning world hungry to stay alive.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.

First, DJ Marcelline stabbed a pomegranate with an elaborately carved knife. Then, she trampled it underfoot, pressing every drop of juice onto the The Kitchen floor until she lay in a bed of seeds. With projections of a burning house behind her, DJ Marcelline shed her neon blue leotard under a sheer confined structure and emerged as Eve with agency. After writing SIN on a hand mirror with lipstick, she made her choice on a pedestal, knifing open a watermelon and wiping juice and pulp on her skin. With each pomegranate trample, every watermelon dig, grunge house beats underscored Black fertility in this transition of power.

MarcellinePhoto by Paula Court

Finally, Moor Mother took the floor with a spare DJ setup. She prefers to create musical experiences instead of discrete songs, and this performance embodied that approach. Rather than simply recreate Black Encyclopedia of the Air or use it as a choreography score, she ballooned one sample from the albums first track into a dance piece exploring gender and societal expectation.

see how you have made God in your image, in your gender

Moor Mothers presence emanated solidity. She swayed with her music the light R&B, the easy jazz, the pops of Gospel harmony and was undisturbed by dancer Vitche-Boul Ras sudden spatial takeover. Ra began dancing through genders, entering as a she, revealing and highlighting a male body, and then remaining gender-neutral for the rest of the dance. Ra strode across the black stage in direct, calm, full erratic lines. Moor Mothers music simply went from one block of style to another, without hiding the seams of genre and emotion, while Ra flowed across the stage in all the ways she could: athletic, shivering, acrobatic.

Moor Mother and Vitche-Boul RaPhoto by Paula Court

Then, with a turn of jacket, Ra revealed himself anew. The costume altered but remained mostly intact black heels, black skirt, black hairbun and spiraling movement highlighted Ras easy strength matched with Moor Mothers relaxed grooves. He continued to move: mesmerizing, elegant, and beautiful. There was a thick trust between the two independent collaborators, and Moor Mothers abrupt musical transitions became anchors in Ras magnificent choreography as they balanced upside-down on a chair, tumbled, and clawed against the wall.

Quantum mechanics teaches us that, to understand nature at its most fundamental level, we must go beyond dualistic and supposedly antithetical labels. A quantum function can be understood only if we accept that it is not a wave or a particle but something else, a more refined something that includes both natures. This arrogant-tender, shy-confident, party-release connected Moor Mothers playful Black Encyclopedia of the Airproject to her serious Afrofuturism workand proves the Black body as an ultimate solution.

I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, funded with generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.

A gift to ACF helps support the work of ICIYL. For more on ACF, visit the At ACF section or composersforum.org.

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Mother Moor Redefines Album Release Parties at The Kitchen - I CARE IF YOU LISTEN

ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs.

In a U.S. government laboratory on Long Island, scientists have forged matter out of pure light using a sophisticated particle accelerator, while also demonstrating an elusive phenomenon for the first time ever on Earth.

The experimental breakthrough validated predictions made by influential physicists nearly a century ago and sheds new light on mysterious processes that occur on both quantum and cosmic scales.

This conversion of photons, which are massless light particles, into electrons, an elementary form of matter, was achieved by a team of researchers working with the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the U.S. Department of Energys Brookhaven National Laboratory. Though the theoretical groundwork of the new research has its origins in the early 20th century, it took special upgrades to an experiment called the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) detector to finally make it a reality.

All the stars lined up for us to get this right, said Zhangbu Xu, a member of the STAR collaboration and the lead author of a recent study about the experiment in Physical Review Letters, in a joint call with fellow STAR members Lijuan Ruan and Daniel Brandenburg.

Ruan, a physicist at Brookhaven and a co-spokesperson for STAR, added that the kinematics of the experiment sit right in the sweet spot for this type of ground-breaking transformation of energy into matter.

Achieving this star-aligned sweet spot is a dream that dates back to 1934, when physicists Gregory Breit and John Wheeler suggested that smashing photons together could produce a matter-antimatter pair composed of electrons, which are negatively charged particles of matter, and positrons, which are antimatter counterparts of electrons that carry a positive charge.

The idea, now known as the Breit-Wheeler process, was inspired in part by the dawn of quantum mechanics during this period, which revealed that photons could interact on quantum levels in ways that are not predicted by classical mechanics. The physicists were also building on Albert Einsteins famous mass-energy equivalence, written as E=mc2, which demonstrates that mass and energy are two sides of the same coin.

That said, it is much trickier to transform energy into matter than it is to convert matter into energy. It would have seemed especially inconceivable back in the 1930s. As a credit to their foresight, Breit and Wheeler speculated that a device that could accelerate ions, which are atoms stripped of electrons, might be able to do the trick, even though no such machine existed at the time.

It shows some of their brilliance because this was in the early 30s, before many of the modern experiments that we have, said Brandenburg, who is a Goldhaber Fellow at Brookhaven. But they already predicted, in the last paragraph of their paper, how you could actually achieve this really difficult process, and they discuss exactly the experiment that we finally have been able to do.

I find it very amazing that they had the insight to predict not only this theory calculation, but that they predicted experimentally how it would come about nearly 100 years before we had the technology to do it, he added.

The experiment that Breit and Wheeler envisioned, and that the STAR collaboration has now successfully conducted, requires shooting heavy ions (in this case gold) past each other at 99.995 percent the speed of light. The strong positive charge and extremely high speeds of the ions create a circular magnetic field and a cloud of photons that travel with the particles through the collider.

As the gold ions skim each other, their halos of light particles interact and produce the matter-antimatter pairs that were predicted so many decades ago. While RHIC was able to demonstrate the Breit-Wheeler process, the STAR detector was the instrument that actually observed, measured, and confirmed the achievement.

Though the milestone is the result of a century of theoretical groundwork, there was also an element of serendipity involved, as STAR researchers only recently realized their setup could experimentally prove this otherworldly conversion of energy into matter.

It's actually only a few years back, in 2018, that we started to see something interesting, but at that time we didn't realize it was the Breit-Wheeler process, said Ruan. We saw something different from what we regularly expected from heavy ion collisions, but it was really when Daniel [Brandenburg] started to do the data analysis with STAR-caliber precision, with all the differential kinematics measurements, that we could say: Oh, this is really the Breit-Wheeler process.

This landmark validation of a long-theorized process is exciting by itself, but the experiment achieved another equally important breakthrough: the first Earth-based demonstration of a phenomenon known as vacuum birefringence, a concept that also dates back nearly a century.

In 1936, physicists Hans Heinrich Euler and Werner Heisenberg (of Heisenberg uncertainty principle fame) predicted that powerful magnetic fields could polarize a vacuum, an effect that would shape the path of light traveling through this empty space in bizarre ways. About 20 years later, physicist John Toll elaborated on this idea by describing vacuum birefringence, which describes how polarization affects the absorption of light by a magnetic field in a vacuum.

Birefringence produces a double image through a crystal. Image: APN MJM

Birefringence can be observed in more familiar materials, like crystals, resulting in light splitting its waveform and producing a double image. This effect can also be observed in extreme environments in space, such as the region surrounding neutron stars, which are collapsed dead stars with extremely strong magnetic fields that can expose the polarization of light.

The STAR collaboration has now captured vacuum birefringence on Earth for the first time, which is a major experimental validation of a bedrock quantum mechanical principle.

The reason that this is so interesting is because a photon has no charge, so it shouldn't, in the classical sense, be affected by a magnetic field, Brandenburg explained. That's why this is a clear proof of these very fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics. A photon can constantly fluctuate into this electron-positron pair that does interact with the magnetic field, and that's exactly what we measured.

The real discovery here is that you can do this in the vacuum of space with a strong magnetic field, and the reason that's so important is that its the first time ever that you can measure the wavefunction of the photon directly, he added.

The dual demonstration of the Breit-Wheeler process and vacuum birefringence is what distinguishes the STAR breakthrough from previous experiments that have converted energy into matter.

During an influential experiment in 1997, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used collisions between lasers and electron beams to create electron-positron pairs from photons. However, that process was not captured with the high-level precision achieved by the STAR team, which revealed never-before-seen details of the conversion that stemmed, in part, from the vacuum birefringence effect.

This is the first measurement that can say, from an experimental standpoint, that we actually observeeven though it's only just for a blink of an eyethese ultrastrong electric and magnetic fields, Brandenburg said. That led to the ability for us, for the first time, to experimentally prove that we have these ultra strong-magnetic fieldsthe strongest in the universe. There's nothing else in the universe that produces such strong fields.

A recent experiment at the Large Hadron Collider transformed energy into mass by smashing photons together to produce W bosons, which are short-lived forms of matter that mediate the weak nuclear force: one of the four fundamental forces of nature. However, compared to electrons, W bosons are an extremely exotic form of matter that decays within a tiny fraction of a second. While the achievement represents a unique breakthrough of its own, it is not a demonstration of the Breit-Wheeler process (nor does the LHC claim that it is).

It is two photons colliding to create something which has a mass, but clearly its not what Breit and Wheeler calculated or predicted, said Xu. In their time, there was no concept of the weak interactions, or [quantum chromodynamics]. The laser was not even invented.

In this way, the LHC, SLAC, and Brookhaven experiments serve as complementary proofs that Einsteins famous formula works both ways, even though it is significantly harder to create mass out of energy than the reverse. The additional demonstration of vacuum birefringence from the STAR collaboration has added a new layer of innovation and insight that can shed light on exotic processes that range in scale from the tiny quantum interiors of atoms to enormous cosmic expanses.

For instance, the new measurements can help astrophysicists and cosmologists model the creation of electron-positive pairs from light around the most energetic objects and events in the universe, such as supernovae or the explosive environments near some black holes. The STAR collaboration also plans to follow up on this experiment by attempting to take the first 2D pictures of the nucleus of an atom, exposing unprecedented details about these fundamental structures of matter.

Beyond the scientific implications of the new experiment, the discovery also illustrates how federally funded research can bring people together to unravel some of the biggest mysteries in physics. After all, the STAR collaboration includes more than 700 scientists from 14 nations, each with their own unique path toward their current role as part of the detector team.

Growing up in China during the 1970s and 80s, Xu recalled that physics, math, and chemistry were treated as golden subjects by his peers and teachers, which sparked his early interest in science. But it was ultimately Xus PhD advisor at Yale University, Jack Sandweiss, who motivated him to become a leading researcher in his field.

He was very passionate about science and was an interesting, inspiring character, Xu said of Sandweiss, who died last year at the age of 90. He was part of the original committee to actually approve the RHIC project which was filled with inspiring characters involved in the heavy ion program at Brookhaven.

When I graduated, I joined the RHIC program, he added, so I have a long connection to RHIC even before I started there.

Brandenburg, who was raised on Floridas Space Coast, was also shaped by a childhood immersed in science-centric culture. His father worked on the Apollo Moon missions and Space Shuttle flights, so its no wonder he dreamt of following his footsteps into the frontiers of science while watching rocket launches from his backyard.

My dad is a naturally curious person and he was always talking to me about what they were working on, Brandenburg said. I'm not sure I can give you a direct route to how I got into high-energy nuclear physics, but I was really fascinated by the colliders, the huge amount of data that's produced, and the fact that it takes really advanced computing techniques just to analyze all of it.

Like Xu and Brandenburg, Ruan said she owed her journey to Brookhaven in part to an exceptional role model: in this case, a fourth grade math teacher. Her teachers talent and love for math instilled such an intense curiosity in Ruan that she began devouring high-school-level textbooks while she was still in elementary school.

Ruans career has since evolved alongside the STAR detector; she spent her PhD at the University of Science and Technology of China working on the machine, and was reunited with it at Brookhaven in 2007. Now, she and her colleagues are guiding a new generation of scientists to push the limits of what can be achieved with the detector.

The STAR experiment is now about 20 years old, but it's still a discovery machine, Ruan said. Thats because we have all these outstanding scientists and students who work really tirelessly to make these things happen. That's the value of the STAR collaboration.

Excerpt from:

Government Scientists Are Creating Matter From Pure Light - VICE