Two Indian physicists have theoretically proposed a path-breaking idea which could fundamentally change the current view about the contents of the universe and potentially provide ways to probe a holy grail of physics, namely the quantum gravity. Professor Pankaj Joshi from Ahmedabad University, India (earlier at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research [TIFR], India) and Professor Sudip Bhattacharyya from TIFR have shown that gravitational collapse of matter in the early universe could give rise to incredibly dense point-like objects, namely visible or naked singularities, which could account for a significant fraction of unseen matter in the universe. This research will be published in the prestigious international academic journal, the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP).

In a recent study published in Science Advances, a team of researchers led by Shengxi Huang, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and materials science and nanoengineering at Rice, describes how one such type of quasiparticle - polarons - behaves in tellurene, a nanomaterial first synthesized in 2017 that is made up of tiny chains of tellurium atoms and has properties useful in sensing, electronic, optical and energy devices.

A major result in quantum mechanics has been achieved: for the first time, the temporal evolution of a quantum system has been manipulated through interaction with light pulses in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV). This achievement has been obtained by a team of researchers coordinated by Prof. Lukas Bruder from the University of Freiburg, in collaboration with 14 international institutes, including the Politecnico di Milano, the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council of Milan (CNR-IFN), the Institute of Materials Workshop of the National Research Council of Trieste (CNR-IOM), the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), the National Laboratories of Frascati (Rome), and the Elettra Synchrotron in Trieste.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Rice University have investigated the intricacies of particle exchange statistics and shown that a third category — paraparticles — can exist under specific physical conditions, obeying exotic "parastatistics" markedly different from those of fermions and bosons. Using a second quantization framework, they mathematically demonstrated that paraparticles emerge as quasiparticle excitations in quantum spin models, challenging long-standing assumptions in condensed matter and particle physics. Their discovery was published last week in Nature.

In a paper recently published in Nature Physics, an international group of researchers comprised of an experimental team from Switzerland and France and theoretical physicists in Canada and the U.S., including Rice University, have found evidence of this enigmatic quantum spin liquid in a material known as pyrochlore cerium stannate. They achieved this by combining state-of-the-art experimental techniques, including neutron scattering at extremely low temperatures, with theoretical analysis. By measuring the way in which neutrons interact magnetically with the electron spin in pyrochlore, the researchers observed the collective excitations of spins interacting strongly with lightlike waves.

Researchers have pioneered the use of parallel computing on graphics cards to simulate acoustic turbulence. This type of simulation, which previously required a supercomputer, can now be performed on a standard personal computer. The discovery will make weather forecasting models more accurate while enabling the use of turbulence theory in various fields of physics, such as astrophysics, to calculate the trajectories and propagation speeds of acoustic waves in the universe. The research, supported by a from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF), was in Physical Review Letters.

A research team coordinated by the Department of Physics was able to work on the powerful computers of Google's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab to conduct a study on confinement in lattice gauge theory. The results of the study have been published in Nature Physics.

A new milestone in nuclear physics has been achieved with the direct observation of three different deformations in the atomic nucleus of lead-190 (190Pb). These deformations, associated with three distinct shapes–spherical, oblate (resembling a tomato), and prolate (similar to a watermelon)–exist simultaneously near the ground state. The findings, published in Communications Physics in January 2025, were made possible by complementary experimental techniques and call for better theoretical models.

Electron transport in bilayer graphene exhibits a pronounced dependence on edge states and a nonlocal transport mechanism, according to a recent study led by Professor Gil-Ho Lee and Ph.D. candidate Hyeon-Woo Jeong of POSTECH’s Department of Physics, in collaboration with Dr. Kenji Watanabe and Dr. Takashi Taniguchi at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS). The findings were published in the international nanotechnology journal Nano Letters.

Researchers led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a breakthrough technique that could lay the foundations for detecting the universe’s “dark matter” and bring scientists closer than before to uncovering the secrets of the cosmos.