Page 1065 – Physics World

Home » Page 1065

A monument to peer review

The Russian sociologist Igor Chirikov from the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow has much to celebrate during this year’s Peer Review Week.

He is now putting in place plans to build what will be the world’s first monument to anonymous peer review and is expecting it to be complete in mid-October.

Earlier this month, Chirikov began a Kickstarter campaign aiming to raise $1300 by 2 October for a sculptor to turn an “ugly” block of concrete outside the university’s Institute of Education into a die. Not any ordinary numbered die, however, but one that would read “accept”, “minor changes”, “major changes”, “revise and resubmit” and “reject” on its five visible sides.

Chirikov, who is also based at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, US, told physicsworld.com that the idea came about as he wanted to acknowledge the role of peer reviewers and use it to “have a good laugh about [the] peer reviewer process together with academics”. He adds, “They are absolutely necessary to advance our knowledge though their contribution is not always recognized. At the same time, I feel for researchers. It’s hard to deal with rejection letters and sometimes nasty comments from reviewers.”

Anyone who pledges $1 will get their names on a nearby sign, while those who give $25 or more will get a small model of the monument. Those who stump up $40 or more will receive two models of the monument while $60 or more will get the title of your paper on the monument itself (although there is only space for 20 titles).

Chirikov already exceeded his target just weeks after starting his fundraising campaign and has so far raised $2235 via 109 backers. He says that all the cash raised will be spent and that any extra money will enable them to build it faster and to use more durable – and more expensive – materials.

“I hoped that many academics will like the idea but was a bit surprised how fast we’ve reached the fundraising goal,” Chirikov told physicsworld.com. “It means that there are common challenges in [the] academic profession across the world and disciplines. It also means that scholars have a good sense of humour.”

This week IOP Publishing is playing its part in Peer Review Week 2016 and has announced a raft of new initiatives, including a dedicated website about peer review, a new partnership with Publons – a reviewer recognition service – as well as a trial of double-blind peer review.

Why do we want to build a watt balance to determine mass?

When you refer to the mass of something as “10 kg” what you are actually saying? In fact what you mean is that the object in question has a mass equivalent to 10 lots of the platinum-iridium “master kilogram” carefully stored at a bureau just outside Paris. In this video, precision measurement researcher Stephan Schlamminger describes an alternative method for defining a standard kilogram. His proposed approach uses a watt balance which determines mass using fundamental constants as it compares electrical and mechanical power. You can see one of these machines in the video, which Schlamminger presents from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg campus in the US. Schlamminger explains why his method would be advantageous to the existing standard.

This video is part of our 100 Second Science series, in which researchers give concise presentations covering the spectrum of physics.

Physics World Special Report: China

By Michael Banks

Physics World published its first special report on China in 2011, which looked at China’s lunar programme and how the country was tackling fraud, as well as profiling the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Institute for High Energy Physics, which are both located in Beijing.

Five years on and physics in the world’s most populous country has rapidly expanded, with China building a number of other huge facilities – including the China Neutron Spallation Source and the China Jinping Underground Laboratory. Now close to completion, they will put the country at the forefront of physics.

So what better time to have another special report on China? Based on visits to Beijing, Hong Kong and Shenzhen, the issue, which you can read free here, includes an overview of the current state of physics in the country as well as an interview with Wei Yang, president of the National Natural Science Foundation – the country’s biggest investor in basic science – and a piece looking at how scientists can foster good collaborations with physicists in China.

(more…)

The facts and figures of peer review

infographic-thumbnail — Counting up: peer review by numbers – click to expand. (Courtesy: IOP Publishing)

By Tushna Commissariat

I mentioned yesterday that it was the start of “Peer Review Week”, which this year takes “recognition for review” as its theme. Physics World is published by IOP Publishing, which makes us a “society publisher” as we’re wholly owned by the Institute of Physics – a charity. IOP Publishing is also a relatively small operation compared with other large commercial publishers, but we still pack a punch, publishing more than 70 journals.

If you’ve ever wondered just how big a deal peer review is to the publishing sector, the infographic above (click on it to see the whole graphic) reveals some key figures such as the number of reviews completed last year at IOP Publishing, the average time taken to complete a review, as well as the reviewers’ geographical spread.

(more…)

Laser polarization boosts quality of proton beams

The quality of laser-accelerated proton beams can be improved by controlling the polarization of the incident laser light, researchers in the UK have discovered. The finding could help physicists to create compact sources of proton beams for use in medicine, lithography or even astrophysics.

Beams of protons and other positive ions have a wide range of applications, including particle physics, materials processing and medicine. Proton-beam therapy, for example, is used to destroy some cancerous tumours with a minimum of collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissue. However, the practical use of proton and ion beams is held back by the need for large and expensive particle accelerators to generate high-quality beams.

One way forward is laser-plasma acceleration, in which a high-power laser pulse is fired into a target. This creates a plasma in which the electrons separate from the ions. This creates huge electric fields that are capable of accelerating protons, ions and electrons to very high energies.

Messy process

It is very challenging, however, to create high-quality proton beams as Felix Mackenroth of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany explains: “Compared to conventional accelerators, lasers produce less energetic and less collimated ion beams”

In a previous study, Paul McKenna and colleagues at the University of Strathclyde, together with researchers at Queens University Belfast and the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, looked at the laser acceleration of electrons from a target of ultrathin aluminium foil using the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’s Gemini laser. A powerful laser pulse from Gemini hits the foil, heating it up so that it becomes a plasma. This disc of plasma in the foil layer is transparent to the pulse and the researchers were able to show that the pulse then diffracts through the plasma disc as it would through a classical aperture. Furthermore, they found that the pattern of electrons ejected from the foil depends on the polarization of the incident laser light.

Water vapour

In this latest research, the team has applied a similar approach to proton acceleration. Even though their experiments are conducted in a vacuum chamber, water vapour naturally condenses on the foil, providing a natural source of protons. The team wanted to see if the structure of the resulting proton beam would be affected by the polarization of the light.

In separate experiments, the researchers irradiated aluminium foils with petawatt pulses of linearly, elliptically and circularly polarized light from Gemini. The pattern of the protons ejected at various energies differed markedly: the lower-energy protons were concentrated into the centre for all the polarizations, for example, but the spread was much tighter for elliptically and circularly polarized light than for linearly polarized light. The higher-energy protons produced by linearly polarized light formed a double-lobe pattern, whereas circularly and elliptically polarized light led to annular density profiles. The experimentally observed patterns closely matched computer simulations, with small deviations fully explained by experimental imperfections, say the researchers.

Black holes

The team plans to “take this research forward with further investigation of approaches to control the ‘relativistic plasma aperture'”, explains McKenna. “This includes polarization control and also control by variation of the intensity profile of the drive laser pulse.” Although the work is currently at the fundamental research stage, McKenna believes it could ultimately have multiple applications for controlling dose deposition in proton-beam therapy, lithography or even astrophysical modelling: “We are exploring the potential applications to other areas of science, including experimental models of astrophysical relativistic plasma jets created by a rotating black-hole accretion disc,” he says.

Other researchers are impressed. “It’s definitely an important contribution,” says Victor Malka of ENSTA Paris-Tech in France, “The quality of the experimental data together with the simulations shows that we [the scientific community] have a very fine understanding of this process.” Felix Mackenroth agrees: “This overall idea that the researchers had is a very neat one and a very significant one as well.”

The research is described in Nature Communications.

Flash Physics: Deborah Jin dies at 47, NASA extends IRIS satellite mission, new UK high-temperature lab

Deborah Jin dies at 47

US physicist Deborah Jin, who was renowned for her groundbreaking work on ultracold atomic gases, died on 15 September at the age of 47. The physicist, who won the 2014 Isaac Newton medal of the Institute of Physics (which also publishes physicsworld.com), lost her battle with cancer, and has been described by colleagues as “one of the great atomic physicists of our day.” Jin joined JILA in 1995 – where she has been a fellow since 2005 – following a degree in physics from Princeton and a PhD from the University of Chicago. Nearly two decades ago, Jin and her then PhD student Brian DeMarco were the first researchers to observe quantum degeneracy in a sufficiently cooled gas of fermionic atoms. They were the first to demonstrate the creation and control of such an ultracold “Fermi gas”, which has since provided us with new insights into superconductivity and other electronic effects in materials. You can read this 2002 feature written by Jin on “A Fermi gas of atoms” and watch her entire 2014 Newton lecture in the video below.

NASA extends its Sun-watching IRIS satellite mission

NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite mission has been granted a $19m extension. The small satellite – which makes detailed observations of the Sun in ultraviolet – is built and operated by Lockheed Martin, and the extension has allowed the firm to extend the mission to September 2018, with a possible further extension to 2019. The satellite was launched in 2013 and was initially designed for a two-year mission. This extension will also increase IRIS’s collaboration with other observatories in California and Europe and Chile. “IRIS has taken more than 24 million images or spectral measurements of the Sun since its launch three years ago, and it has led to more than 115 scientific papers,” says Bart De Pontieu, IRIS science lead at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center. The satellite will now be studying the tail end of the solar activity cycle, which just peaked – some of the largest flares and most powerful coronal mass ejections occur during this phase of the solar cycle.

Physicist Qi-Kun Xue bags inaugural Chinese science prize

The first winners of the privately sponsored Future Science prize, for discoveries made in China, were announced yesterday in Beijing, and include a physicist. Qi-Kun Xue of Tsinghua University won the physical-science prize for his groundbreaking discoveries “of novel quantum phenomena using molecular beam epitaxy, including quantum anomalous Hall effect and monolayer FeSe superconductivity”. Each prize is worth US$1m, and Xue told Nature News that he will share the money with colleagues who contributed towards both discoveries. Xue completed his PhD in condensed-matter physics from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994. His research is important for the development of topological insulators – find out more about their potential applications in this video. To discover more about the rise of physics in China today, take a look at our new Physics World Special Report: China.

New high-temperature lab opens in the UK

Photograph taken inside the High Temperature Facility — Hot stuff: Amec Foster Wheeler technologist Lee Waterhouse (left) explains one of the test rigs at the High Temperature Facility to Neil Irvine from the University of Manchester’s Dalton Nuclear Institute. (Courtesy: Amec Foster Wheeler)

A new facility to develop energy-generation systems based on nuclear fusion, nuclear fission and other high-temperature technologies has opened in the UK. The High Temperature Facility (HTF) is located in Warrington in north-west England and is managed by the British company Amec Foster Wheeler. The HTF is open to the research community and is equipped to test materials at temperatures up to 1000 °C and recreate environments containing pressurized gas and liquid metal. The facility will be run in co-operation with the High Temperature Facility Alliance, which comprises the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory, EDF Energy, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the nuclear fuel supplier URENCO and four UK universities.

You can find all our daily Flash Physics posts in the website’s news section, as well as on Twitter and Facebook using #FlashPhysics. Tune in to physicsworld.com later today to read today’s extensive news story on laser-driven proton acceleration.

Quantum teleportation comes to Hefei and Calgary

Studies done in the Chinese city of Hefei and at Calgary in Canada show that quantum teleportation can be achieved over distances of several kilometres using commercial optical-fibre networks. Carried out by two independent teams of physicists who used slightly different techniques, the demonstrations involved transferring the quantum state of a photon in a process called quantum teleportation. The ability to achieve quantum teleportation is an important benchmark for quantum-optical networks and the research suggests that telecommunication networks could be used for a range of quantum communications such as distributed quantum computing.

First proposed in the 1990s, quantum teleportation involves transporting a quantum state of a particle – the polarization of a photon, for example – across space without moving the particle itself. This involves making a special initial measurement on the particle, transmitting the measurement information to a receiving destination and then reconstructing a perfect copy of the original state. Crucially, the original particle loses all of the properties that are teleported. This satisfies the “no-cloning” theorem of quantum mechanics, which dictates that it is impossible to make a perfect copy of a quantum state.

Charlie in the middle

The recent demonstrations were done by two independent teams – one led by Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and the other by Wolfgang Tittel at the University of Calgary. Both groups used set-ups that involved an agent called “Alice”, who possesses the quantum state of a photon to be teleported, and an agent called “Bob” who receives the information and recreates the quantum state. Much of the work is done by a third party called “Charlie”, who possesses most of the sophisticated optical equipment needed to achieve quantum teleportation. This is seen as a practical way of achieving quantum teleportation because it only requires Charlie to buy and maintain expensive and delicate equipment.

The use of three “agents” to exchange quantum information is not new. It was first implemented last year by Ronald Hanson and colleagues in the Netherlands, who used it to perform a “loophole-free” Bell-violation experiment. In that experiment, however, the maximum distance between Alice, Charlie and Bob was just 1.28 km. In contrast, the Hefei and Calgary experiments involve optical fibres longer than 10 km.

Bell measurement

The most difficult part of the teleportation exercises is the initial “Bell measurement”. This is made by Alice on the photon to be cloned and also on one photon in a pair of entangled photons. The result of this measurement is then sent to Bob, who also receives the other photon in the entangled pair. Using Alice’s measurement information, Bob then makes a further measurement on the entangled photon, which puts it into the same quantum state as the cloned photon.

In the Hefei implementation, generating the entangled pair and making the Bell measurement are done by Charlie. In the Calgary experiment, Charlie does the Bell measurement but Bob creates the entangled pair. In both cases, Alice supplies the quantum state to be cloned and Bob makes the final measurement. In both experiments, photons travel in excess of 10 km along optical fibres.

Researchers in Calgary used a commercial fibre link for their experiment, but the fibre was “dark” with no traffic running through it. The Hefei fibre network is dedicated to quantum communication and has been specially constructed to minimize interference with quantum signals.

The experiments are reported in two separate papers in Nature Photonics.

Jian-Wei Pan shared the 2015 Physics World Breakthrough of the year award for his work on the simultaneous teleportation of two quantum properties of a photon.

Recognizing peer review and all those who referee

Recognised reviewers: Peer Review Week 2016 — Recognized reviewers: Peer Review Week 2016

By Tushna Commissariat

This week, academic publishers all over the world are celebrating peer review and the vital role it plays in the scientific process. Indeed, this week is officially dubbed “Peer Review Week” and this yearly event aims to bring together “individuals, institutions and organizations committed to sharing the central message that good peer review, whatever shape or form it might take, is critical to scholarly communications”. This is the second time the event is being held, and this year’s theme is “recognition for review”.

(more…)

Flash Physics: TRIUMF licenses isotope-production technology, Marsquakes may help to sustain microbial life, PandaX-II spots no dark matter

Canadian lab licenses isotope-production technology

A consortium of Canadian research institutes including the TRIUMF accelerator lab in Vancouver has granted ARTMS Products a licence to use its proprietary technology to produce the medical-isotope technetium-99m using medical cyclotrons. These cyclotrons can be found in many large hospitals and the move is part of a Canadian effort to produce the isotope without the need for a nuclear reactor. This is necessary because the NRU reactor at Chalk River, Ontario – which currently supplies all of the technetium-99m used in Canada and the US – will stop making technetium-99m at the end of October. ARTMS is based in Canada and run by Paul Schaffer, who also heads up the life-science research division at TRIUMF. The technique involves firing a proton beam at a special target and then rapidly extracting the short-lived technetium-99m.

Marsquakes may help to sustain microbial life on the red planet

Seismic activity on Mars may produce enough hydrogen to sustain bacterial life. That’s the finding of an international team of researchers whose latest study found that rocks that are formed by the grinding together of others during earthquakes are rich in trapped hydrogen. The researchers – based at Yale University in the US, Brock University in Canada and the University of Aberdeen in the UK – say that although Mars in currently not very seismically active, their work suggests that “Marsquakes” could produce enough hydrogen to support small populations of micro-organisms for short periods of time. “This is just one part of the emerging picture of the habitability of the Martian subsurface, where other sources of energy for life may also be available. The best way to find evidence of life on Mars may be to examine rocks and minerals that formed deep underground around faults and fractures, which were later brought to the surface by erosion,” says Yale geophysicist Sean McMahon. The work is published in the journal Astrobiology.

PandaX-II sees no signs of dark matter

Artist's impression of the China JinPing lab — Deep detector: PandaX-II in the China JinPing lab is 2400 m below the surface of the Earth. (Courtesy: Tsinghua University)

A 500 kg liquid-xenon detector in the world’s deepest underground laboratory has failed to see any hints of dark matter after running for nearly 100 days. The null result obtained by the PandaX-II experiment at the China JinPing laboratory allows physicists to put the most stringent upper-limit yet on the strength of the spin-independent interaction between weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and ordinary matter. WIMPs are a favoured candidate for dark matter – a mysterious substance that appears to account for about 84% of the matter in the universe and has a profound effect on the formation of galaxies and other large-scale structures in the cosmos. Discovering a dark-matter particle would be an important step towards a theory of particle-physics beyond the Standard Model. There is more about the nature of dark matter in this video: “What is dark matter?“. The work is published in Physical Review Letters.

A deeper understanding of material interfaces

A new method that gives physicists a clearer look into the interfaces that exist between different materials has been developed by an international team of researchers. Their work could have many applications in modern electronic devices that are based on semiconductor heterostructures, as well as topological and correlated materials. The team, led by Vladimir Hinkov at Würzburg University, has uncovered important charge properties of correlated oxide interfaces with unprecedented atomic-scale resolution. The work helps to move away from conventional electronic chips based on p–n junctions – which are bulky and use a lot of energy – to transition-metal-oxide interfaces that display a variety of tuneable parameters. To better understand the behaviour of electrons in the latter interfaces, the researchers developed a new method, based on “resonant X-ray reflectometry”, and a new analysis software. The research is published in npj Quantum Materials.

You can find all our daily Flash Physics posts in the website’s news section, as well as on Twitter and Facebook using #FlashPhysics. Tune in to physicsworld.com later today to read today’s extensive news story on quantum networks.

Award-winning ‘Bailys Beads’, schoolyard accelerators , pulsar poems and more

By Tushna Commissariat

Its officially that time of the year again when we can marvel at this year’s winners of the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016. The awards ceremony, held at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, has unveiled some truly spectacular and ethereal shots of our universe. The overall winner this year is a truly amazing composite image of the 2016 total solar eclipse that shows the ‘Baily’s Beads’ phenomenon and was taken by photographer Yu Jun in Luwuk, Indonesia. In the video above, the judges explain why this particular image was the main winner for the year.

(more…)

Browse articles by content type

A monument to peer review

Why do we want to build a watt balance to determine mass?

Physics World Special Report: China

The facts and figures of peer review