Physics News

Researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators have synthesized a new isotope—protactinium-210—for the first time. It is the most neutron-deficient isotope of protactinium synthesized to date. Their findings are published in Nature Communications.

The LHCb experiment has taken a leap in precision physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In a new paper submitted to Physical Review Letters and currently available on the arXiv preprint server, the LHCb collaboration reports the first dedicated measurement of the Z boson mass at the LHC, using data from high-energy collisions between protons recorded in 2016 during the collider’s second run.

A research team led by Prof. Yong Gaochan from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a novel experimental method to probe the hyperon potential, offering new insights into resolving the longstanding “hyperon puzzle” in neutron stars. These findings were published in Physics Letters B and Physical Review C.

When placed under a powerful laser field (i.e., under strong-field ionization), electrons can temporarily cross the so-called quantum tunneling barrier, an energy barrier that they would typically be unable to overcome. This quantum mechanics phenomenon, known as quantum tunneling, has been the focus of numerous research studies.

Quantum materials exhibit remarkable emergent properties when they are excited by external sources. However, these excited states decay rapidly once the excitation is removed, limiting their practical applications.