- Research News
Quantum Gases Keep Their Cool, Prompting New Mysteries
Quantum physics is a notorious rule-breaker. For example, it makes the classical laws of thermodynamics, which describe how heat and energy move around, look more like guidelines than ironclad natural laws. In some experiments, a quantum object can keep its cool despite sitting next… Read More - Research News
Beyond Higgs: The Search for New Particles That Could Solve Mysteries of the Universe
An elusive elementary particle called the Higgs boson is partly to thank for life as we know it. No other elementary particles in the early universe had mass until they interacted with a field associated with the Higgs boson, enabling the emergence of planets,… Read More - Research News
Compact Electron Accelerator Reaches New Speeds with Nothing But Light
Scientists harnessing precise control of ultrafast lasers have accelerated electrons over a 20-centimeter stretch to speeds usually reserved for particle accelerators the size of 10 football fields. A team at the University of Maryland (UMD) headed by Professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer… Read More - Research News
Quantum Computers Are Starting to Simulate the World of Subatomic Particles
There is a heated race to make quantum computers deliver practical results. But this race isn't just about making better technology—usually defined in terms of having fewer errors and more qubits, which are the basic building blocks that store quantum information. At least for… Read More - Research News
Bilayer Graphene Inspires Two-Universe Cosmological Model
Physicists sometimes come up with crazy stories that sound like science fiction. Some turn out to be true, like how the curvature of space and time described by Einstein was eventually borne out by astronomical measurements. Others linger on as mere possibilities or mathematical… Read More - Research News
New Perspective Blends Quantum and Classical to Understand Quantum Rates of Change
There is nothing permanent except change. This is perhaps never truer than in the fickle and fluctuating world of quantum mechanics. The quantum world is in constant flux. The properties of quantum particles flit between discrete, quantized states without any possibility of ever being… Read More - Research News
Tug-of-War Unlocks Menagerie of Quantum Phases of Matter
Phases are integral to how we define our world. We navigate through the phases of our lives, from child to teenager to adult, chaperoned along the way by our changing traits and behaviors. Nature, too, undergoes phase changes. Lakes can freeze for the winter,… Read More - Research News
Enhancing Simulations of Curved Space with Qubits
One of the mind-bending ideas that physicists and mathematicians have come up with is that space itself—not just objects in space—can be curved. When space curves (as happens dramatically near a black hole), sizes and directions defy normal intuition. Something as straightforward as defining… Read More - Research News
In a Smooth Move, Ions Ditch Disorder and Keep Their Memories
A Persian adage, notably wielded by Abe Lincoln(link is external) and the band OK Go(link is external), expresses the ephemeral nature of the world: “This, too, shall pass.” Physicists have their own version of this rule. It says that wiggles and wrinkles—really any small… Read More
- The Physics of Sound
Department News
-
Sep 1, 2022 Blessing the World With More Leons On a warm June afternoon in 2022, a group of friends, family members and former coworkers gathered around a Bradford pear tree outside NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to remember a physicist named Leon Herreid. Herreid studied physics as a Ph.D. student at the University… Read More -
Sep 6, 2022 From Unexpected Opportunity to Game-changing Discovery In the world of startups, opportunity can come knocking in strange ways. Six years ago, Didier Depireux (Ph.D. ’91, physics) was doing research at the University of Maryland when he was approached by Sam Owen, a young scientist who said he’d developed a device to… Read More -
Sep 6, 2022 Diving into UMD’s Quantum Community In 2021, when Jade LeSchack was a high school senior imagining herself at potential colleges, she was already entranced by physics—quantum physics in particular. After taking high school physics classes and an online course on quantum computing, she wanted to explore the world of physics… Read More -
Sep 2, 2022 Recent Physics Grad Sees Many Roads Ahead As Jeffrey Wack (B.S. ’22, physics; B.S. ’22, mathematics) walked across the graduation stage in May 2022, he carried with him a lot of uncertainty about where to go next. His trepidation came from his voracious curiosity for a broad range of things, primarily within… Read More
- 1
- 2
- 3
› ‹
