A tiny worm that leaps high into the air — up to 25 times its body length — to attach to flying insects uses static electricity to perform this astounding feat, scientists have found. The journal PNAS published the work on the nematode Steinernema carpocapsae, a parasitic roundworm, led by researchers at Emory University (Justin Burton and Ranjiangshang Ran, … More The Electric Worm Gets the Fly
Researchers from Harutyunyan Lab and their collaborators have built an ultrathin electronic device that can both make and sense light at the scale of a few atoms. The heart of the device is a remarkably stable tunnel junction, two metal films separated by a crystal-clear layer of lutetium oxide (Lu₂O₃). In this tiny gap, electrons … More Sensing and generating light with a few atoms
Associate Professor Luiz Santos has just recevied 2 grants recognizing his work at the forefront of quantum materials research. The first is a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award, titled “Developing New Paradigms for Hybrid Light-Matter Quantum Materials,” which recognizes early-career researchers with ambitious scientific ideas in their field. The second award is a Department … More Prof. Luiz Santos receives prestigious NSF CAREER and DOE awards
The brain must store and process continuous data to survive, from navigating a forest to keeping your eyes still. However, theoretical models of such continuous memories in neural networks have to date typically required fine-tuning. In a recent paper published in PRX Life, and featured on the journal cover, Prof. Tankut Can and his co-authors … More Freezing a Memory in a Neural Network
A new model suggests we remember stories, like that of Romeo and Juliet, by using a tree-shaped mental framework. Oh, those star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Most of us can recount their story, even if we can’t recite any specific lines from the play. A new theory by Emory Physics Professor Tankut Can and his … More How We Remember Stories
Emory physicists have teamed up to use a machine-learning method to identify surprising new twists on the non-reciprocal forces governing a many-body system. The journal PNAS published the findings by experimental and theoretical physicists at Emory University, based on a neural network model and data from laboratory experiments on dusty plasma — ionized gas containing suspended dust … More AI reveals unexpected new physics in dusty plasma
In an extensive numerical study just published in Physical Review Letters, Boettcher and Emory undergrad Honor student, Ginger E. Lau, explored the properties of ground states of a spin glass with three-body interactions. The corresponding two-body problem, known as the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model (whose solution earned Parisi the 2021 Nobel prize), is widely recognized as one … More With interacting spins, three’s company
Associate Teaching Professor Jed Brody‘s has published a new book on the joys of quantum computing! Get your copy today at your favorite book retailer! Book Synopsis An engaging and accessible presentation of the most famous algorithms and applications of quantum computing The Joy of Quantum Computing introduces quantum computing succinctly, and with minimal mathematical formalism. … More The Joy of Quantum Computing
Life emerged on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago. The “primordial soup theory” proposes that chemicals floating in pools of water, in the presence of sunlight and electrical discharge, spontaneously formed organic molecules. These building blocks of life underwent chemical reactions, likely driven by RNA, eventually leading to the formation of single cells. But what … More A New Clue to Multicellular Life