Modern Physics Research Articles

Prospective teachers’ perception of critical and reflective thinking skills on modern physics: Rasch Analysis

Related research on critical and reflective thinking skills has been interesting and conducted by many researchers, but they are still carried out separately. This study aims to determine the perception of prospective teachers towards critical and reflective thinking skills in modern physics lectures. This research includes quantitative research using the cross-sectional survey method. Ninety-seven prospective teachers participated in the study, with details of 15 men and 82 women with an age range of 19-21 years. Questionnaire critical and reflective thinking skills are used as instruments for collecting data. Each of them is a 20-item critical thinking skills questionnaire and 24 items of reflective thinking skills questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed using winsteps software version 4.6.1. which includes descriptive, individual conformity, gender, and bubble chart. The results of detailed data analysis show that for critical thinking skills, 17% of prospective teachers perceive low, 68% of prospective teachers perceive moderate, and 15% of prospective teachers perceive high. As for reflective thinking ability, 11% of prospective teachers perceive low, 78% of prospective teachers perceive moderate, and 11% of prospective teachers perceive high. However, there are many misfit persons, 66% for critical thinking skills and 67% for reflective thinking skills. This means prospective teachers do not have strong perception beliefs in both thinking skills. Therefore, it needs to be strengthened through treatment, training, or workshops to further train both skills.

Remote Laboratory Based on the Internet of Things for E-Learning: A Development Model of Newton’s Law Experiment

Remote laboratory is a development of digital technology to support the quality of learning in this digital era. However, scientific processes often cannot be accommodated in digital spaces such as e-learning. This research highlights a remote laboratory system that can accommodate scientific process improvement in e-learning. The research objective is to develop and determine the performance of the remote laboratory system of Newton’s Law experiment based on IoT for e-learning as an experiment development model. Research methods can be classified into design and development, abbreviated as DDR. The remote laboratory system is designed and developed in six phases. This system is developed by five main components, namely, a photodiode sensor, MCU nodes, motor drivers, stepper motor, and ESP 32 CAM. The results indicate that the remote laboratory system of Newton's law experiment has demonstrated positive performance, and the accuracy and precision of measurement from the remote laboratory system are classified as high. Accordingly, the remote laboratory system of Newton's law experiment can be used as an alternative to support scientific processes in e-learning. It is expected to serve as a guide for virtual laboratory design, enlightening the audience on the potential of this system. It is used extensively for experimental teaching in modern physics education. The success in designing and developing an experimental model of Newton's law by implementing a remote laboratory based on IoT provides a good opportunity to develop various more sophisticated physics experimental systems to support the science process and e-learning.

Being-Time, or How Traditional Japanese Thought Collided with Western Philosophy and Modern Physics at Hiroshima

The atom bomb that annihilated Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, proved Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Mass became energy and the classic Western dialectic of three-dimensional space and linear time was displaced by the integrated concept of spacetime. On that day, modern physics also collided with the traditional Japanese understanding that space and time are interdependent phenomena. This collision speaks to conceptual parallels relating Buddhist thought, modern Japanese philosophy, phenomenology, and the physics of spacetime. The thirteenth-century Zen Buddhist monk Dōgen said that all phenomena are made possible by the universal principle of emptiness and that our existence arises with each moment in what he termed Being-Time, where past, present, and future co-exist. The Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, along with Tanabe Hajime and Watsuji Tetsurō, saw reality as a multi-dimensional field of space-in-time where the individual subject no longer stood apart from the objective world but instead arose dynamically as contingent activities rather than an autonomous thing. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger rejected the rational binary of subject and object in Western thought and grounded our “being” in phenomena that came from their temporal being-in-the-world rather than representing some preexisting objective reality. The physicist Albert Einstein radically rethought the dialectic of three-dimensional space and linear time, used to schematize the physical world in the West since antiquity, and theorized the relativity of spacetime, in which all phenomena occur in space in relation to their place in time. Interwoven, these intellectual threads stripped the bombing of Hiroshima of its historical inevitability. The story of human experience lost its customary sense of going <i>somewhere</i> predetermined and was revealed instead to be an endlessly discrete accumulation of moments that could go <i>anywhere</i> at every transient and directionless moment in time.

Jet Tagging with More-Interaction Particle Transformer

Abstract In this study, we introduce the More-Interaction Particle Transformer (MIParT), a novel deep learning neural network designed for jet tagging. This framework incorporates our own design, the More-Interaction Attention (MIA) mechanism, which increases the dimensionality of particle interaction embeddings. We tested MIParT using the top tagging and quark-gluon datasets. Our results show that MIParT not only matches the accuracy and AUC of LorentzNet and a series of Lorentz-equivariant methods, but also significantly outperforms the ParT model in background rejection. Specifically, it improves background rejection by approximately 25\% at a 30\% signal efficiency on the top tagging dataset and by 3\% on the quark-gluon dataset. Additionally, MIParT requires only 30\% of the parameters and 53\% of the computational complexity needed by ParT, proving that high performance can be achieved with reduced model complexity. For very large datasets, we double the dimension of particle embeddings, referring to this variant as MIParT-Large (MIParT-L). We find that MIParT-L can further capitalize on the knowledge from large datasets. From a model pre-trained on the 100M JetClass dataset, the background rejection performance of the fine-tuned MIParT-L improved by 39\% on the top tagging dataset and by 6\% on the quark-gluon dataset, surpassing that of the fine-tuned ParT. Specifically, the background rejection of fine-tuned MIParT-L improved by an additional 2\% compared to the fine-tuned ParT. The results suggest that MIParT has the potential to advance efficiency benchmarks for jet tagging and event identification in particle physics.Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Article funded by SCOAP3 and published under licence by Chinese Physical Society and the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing Ltd

Exploring uncertainty in glass phase transitions through machine learning

Machine learning methods have shown significant potential and are widely used in modern physics research. However, the uncertainty linked to machine learning, arising from the opacity of its workflow, demands attention and consideration. This study investigates the application of machine learning models in analyzing the glass transition of Cu50Zr50 metallic glass. By employing supervised learning techniques with ResNet50, MobileNetV3, and GoogleNet image extraction models, the study reveals that while machine learning can capture variations in the disordered atomic structure during the transition process, different models may yield divergent results in determining the glass transition temperature. Moreover, variations in atomic sizes within the images can lead to fluctuations in the predicted transition temperatures. These findings highlight the inherent uncertainties associated with using machine learning to analyze continuous phase transitions and stress the importance of ensuring that the extracted structural features align with the physical characteristics of the transition process.

Potential to Identify the Neutrino Mass Ordering with Reactor Antineutrinos in JUNO

Abstract The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose neutrino experiment under construction in South of China. This paper presents an updated estimate of JUNO's sensitivity to the neutrino mass ordering using the reactor antineutrinos emitted from eight nuclear reactor cores in the Taishan and Yangjiang nuclear power plants. This measurement is planned by studying the fine interference pattern caused by quasi-vacuum oscillations in the oscillated antineutrino spectrum at a baseline of 52.5~km and is completely independent of the CP violating phase and the neutrino mixing angle θ23. The sensitivity is obtained through a joint analysis of JUNO and TAO detectors utilizing the best available knowledge to date about the location and overburden of the JUNO experimental site, the local and global nuclear reactors, the JUNO and TAO detectors responses, the expected event rates and spectra of signal and backgrounds, and the systematic uncertainties of the analysis inputs. It is found that a 3σ median sensitivity to reject the wrong mass ordering hypothesis can be reached with an exposure of about 6.5 years × 26.6~GW thermal power.Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Article funded by SCOAP3 and published under licence by Chinese Physical Society and the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing Ltd.

Thermal interface materials: From fundamental research to applications

AbstractThe miniaturization, integration, and high data throughput of electronic chips present challenging demands on thermal management, especially concerning heat dissipation at interfaces, which is a fundamental scientific question as well as an engineering problem—a heat death problem called in semiconductor industry. A comprehensive examination of interfacial thermal resistance has been given from physics perspective in 2022 in Review of Modern Physics. Here, we provide a detailed overview from a materials perspective, focusing on the optimization of structure and compositions of thermal interface materials (TIMs) and the interact/contact with heat source and heat sink. First, we discuss the impact of thermal conductivity, bond line thickness, and contact resistance on the thermal resistance of TIMs. Second, it is pointed out that there are two major routes to improve heat transfer through the interface. One is to reduce the TIM's thermal resistance (RTIM) of the TIMs through strategies like incorporating thermal conductive fillers, enhancing interfacial structure and treatment techniques. The other is to reduce the contact thermal resistance (Rc) by improving effective interface contact, strengthening bonding, and utilizing mass gradient TIMs to alleviate vibrational mismatch between TIM and heat source/sink. Finally, such challenges as the fundamental theories, potential developments in sustainable TIMs, and the application of AI in TIMs design are also explored.

Gauged Gaussian projected entangled pair states: A high dimensional tensor network formulation for lattice gauge theories

Gauge theories form the basis of our understanding of modern physics—ranging from the description of quarks and gluons to effective models in condensed matter physics. In the nonperturbative regime, gauge theories are conventionally treated discretely as lattice gauge theories. The resulting systems are evaluated with path-integral based Monte Carlo methods. These methods, however, can suffer from the sign problem and do not allow for a direct evaluation of real-time dynamics. In this work, we present a unified and comprehensive framework for gauged Gaussian projected entangled pair states (PEPS), a variational ansatz based on tensor networks. We review the construction of Hamiltonian lattice gauge theories, explain their similarities to PEPS, and detail the construction of the ansatz state. The estimation of ground states is based on a variational Monte Carlo procedure with the PEPS as an ansatz state. This sign-problem-free ansatz can be efficiently evaluated in any dimension with arbitrary gauge groups, and can include dynamical fermionic matter, suggesting new options for the simulation of nonperturbative regimes of gauge theories, including quantum chromodynamics. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Quantum geometry in condensed matter

Abstract One of the most celebrated accomplishments of modern physics is the description of fundamental principles of nature in the language of geometry. As the motion of celestial bodies is governed by the geometry of spacetime, the motion of electrons in condensed matter can be characterized by the geometry of the Hilbert space of their wave functions. Such quantum geometry, comprising of Berry curvature and quantum metric, can thus exert profound influences on various properties of materials. The dipoles of both Berry curvature and quantum metric produce nonlinear transport. The quantum metric plays an important role in flat-band superconductors by enhancing the transition temperature. The uniformly distributed momentum-space quantum geometry stabilizes the fractional Chern insulators and results in the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect. We here review in detail quantum geometry in condensed matter, paying close attention to its effects on nonlinear transport, superconductivity, and topological properties. Possible future research directions in this field are also envisaged.

S-band high-gradient low β single-periodic magnetically coupled standing-wave accelerating structure for a proton therapy linac

S-band high-gradient accelerating structures were proposed to accelerate protons from 30 to 230 MeV for a compact proton therapy linac in Institute of Modern Physics. A backward traveling wave structure and a single-periodic magnetically coupled standing wave structure were designed, and differences between these two structures were analyzed to select a more suitable one for the proton therapy linac. In this paper, a novel single-periodic magnetically coupled standing-wave accelerating structure was studied, with an optimized nose cone that related to a smaller peak surface electric field and higher shunt impedance, with the reduced number of coupling holes and mechanical von Mises stress thus making it possible for higher duty factor and longer rf pulse operation, also with larger coupling holes and improved cell-to-cell coupling thus making this structure suitable for operating in π mode. An 11-cell high-power prototype for β=0.26 particles was developed with an active length of 143 mm. This prototype cavity is supposed to operate at an accelerating gradient of 30 MV/m with 0.1% duty factor, corresponding to a maximum surface electric field of 105 MV/m and a peak rf power of 3.43 MW. Cavity design, optimization, manufacture, rf measurement, and high-power test will be discussed in this paper. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

EDMUND T. WHITTAKER, PHYSICS AND CATHOLICISM. THOUGHTS OF A CONVERT

In 1951, Pope Pius XII gave a long speech with the unequivocal title ‘The proofs for the existence of God in the light of modern natural science’, dealing with the relationship between modern science, Thomism and theology. The event was widely reported in the British press partly because the only living scientist quoted in that discourse was the Edinburgh emeritus professor of mathematics and convert to Catholicism, Edmund T. Whittaker (1873–1956), who was, in the 1930s and 1940s, producing his own corpus on the then-popular subject of science and religion. In this article, using the vast and unexplored correspondence between Whittaker and his son, the mathematician John M. Whittaker (1905–1984), I shall explore his thoughts and popular works, in which he mixed modern physics and mathematics, philosophy, apologetics, and theology. Whittaker is well known among historians of science for his A history of the theories of aether and electricity , the work of a hard-working, self-trained history aficionado. Similarly, after his conversion (in 1930, at the age of 57), Whittaker started reading and forming his own views around the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, Thomism. The core idea with which he justified his conversion and which would be the backbone of his speculations on natural theology was ‘sacramentality’. With it, he thought he could bridge the gap between mathematics, modern physics, and religion, and all with a sui generis embrace of Thomism.

Supersymmetric Hybrid Inflation in Light of CMB Experiments and Swampland Conjectures

Abstract In this study, we revisited supersymmetric (SUSY) hybrid inflation considering the latest observations from CMB experiments and the swampland conjectures. We demonstrated that when incorporating radiative, soft mass, and SUGRA corrections to the scalar potential, SUSY hybrid inflation remains consistent with Planck 2018 data. It is commonly perceived that SUSY hybrid inflation with a minimal K"ahler potential results in a gauge symmetry breaking scale $M$ of ${\cal O}(10^{15})$ GeV, leading to issues with the proton decay rate. Our analysis introduces a new parameter space where the proton decay problem is mitigated by achieving $M \sim 10^{16}$ GeV with $M_{S}^{2}<0$ and $am_{3/2}>0$. This scenario necessitates a soft SUSY breaking scale $|M_{S}| \gtrsim 10^{6}$ GeV. Furthermore, we found that the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ spans from $10^{-16}$ to $10^{-6}$, indicating a very small value. This small ratio allows the modified swampland criteria to hold, although satisfying the trans-Planckian censorship conjecture remains challenging. To address this, we also explored non-minimal K"ahler potentials. By fixing the spectral index at $n_{S}=0.9665$, consistent with the central value of Planck 2018 data, and setting $M=2\times 10^{16}$ GeV, we presented our calculations. We showed that the canonical measure of primordial gravitational waves, $r$, for $M_{S}=$ 1 TeV, $m_{3/2}=$ 1 TeV, $\kappa_{S}<0$ for $\cal{N}=$1 and $\cal{N}=$2, ranges from $10^{-5}$ to $0.01$, making it detectable by Planck and upcoming experiments such as LiteBIRD, Simons Observatory, PRISM, PIXIE, CORE, CMB-S4, and CMB-HD. Additionally, we outlined the parametric space and provided benchmark points for the non-minimal case, ensuring compatibility with both the modified swampland and trans-Planckian censorship conjectures. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Article funded by SCOAP3 and published under licence by Chinese Physical Society and the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing Ltd

Galileo's ship and the relativity principle

AbstractIt is widely acknowledged that the Galilean Relativity Principle, according to which the laws of classical systems are the same in all inertial frames in relative motion, has played an important role in the development of modern physics. It is also commonly believed that this principle holds the key to answering why, for example, we do not notice the orbital velocity of the Earth as we go about our day. And yet, I argue in this paper that the precise content of this principle is ambiguous: standard presentations, in both physics and philosophy, fail to distinguish between two principles that are ultimately inequivalent, the “External Galilean Relativity Principle” (EGRP) and the “Internal Galilean Relativity Principle” (IGRP). I demonstrate that EGRP and IGRP play distinct roles in physics practice (e.g., EGRP is connected to the concept of Galilean invariance, but IGRP is not) and that many classical systems that satisfy IGRP fail to satisfy EGRP. I further show that the Relativity Principle famously discussed by Einstein in 1905—which is not restricted to classical systems—also leads to two inequivalent principles, an external one analogous to EGRP, and an internal one analogous to IGRP. I conclude by highlighting that the phenomenon originally captured by Galileo's famous ship passage is much more general than contemporary discussions in the philosophy of symmetries suggest.

Fermi Rubik’s Cube in High-pressure Induced Chlorine-riched Compounds

Abstract In the quasi-free electron model, which is widely used in modern solid-state physics, the Fermi surface spreads into a sphere in the Brillouin zone, i.e., the Fermi Sphere. The Fermi Sphere exists widely in metal systems, no matter whether the crystal is in a body-center cubic, face-center cubic, or hexagonal close-packed lattice. Here, we report a class of compounds stabilized at high pressure with a Rubik's cubic Fermi surface, in which the representative example is P m-3n-CaCl3. Our quantum-mechanical variable- composition evolutionary simulations predicted the thermal stabilities of CaCl3, and the tight-binding model revealed its unique Fermi surface originates from the quasi-one- dimensional interaction, structural symmetric protection, and particle-hole symmetry breaking. Furthermore, by its flat and steep band structure, CaCl3 has a huge span of effective mass from 9.08×103 me (super-heavy) to 5.13×10-4 me on the Fermi level, which supplies an interesting platform for quasiparticle research.

Design and commissioning of a two-harmonic pre-buncher for extended bunch spacing at LEAF

The Low Energy Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (LEAF) is a low-energy, high-intensity heavy-ion linear accelerator facility at Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) for multidiscipline research. The beam bunch repetition rate coincides with the LINAC frequency of 81.25 MHz, resulting in a 12.3 ns period. However, in the context of certain nuclear physics experiments, a longer bunch spacing is deemed essential for the precise detection of experimental products. To address this need, a strategy to extend the bunch spacing to 98 ns has been proposed by integrating a pre-buncher operating at a fundamental frequency of 10.156 MHz before the radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) in conjunction with a fast chopper in the medium energy beam transport (MEBT) system. The pre-buncher is a pivotal component in enabling a greater beam current at the target, surpassing the capability of employing a chopper alone. To enhance the bunching efficiency, the pre-buncher operates with two frequencies: the fundamental frequency of 10.156 MHz and its first sub-harmonic of 20.3125 MHz, each of which is produced by a coaxial resonator. This paper describes the design, manufacture, off-line testing, and beam commissioning of the pre-buncher.

CP violation of baryon decays with N π rescatterings* *Supported in part by the Natural Science Foundation of China (12335003), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (lzujbky-2024-oy02, lzujbky-2023-it12)

There is a long-standing puzzle that the CP violation (CPV) in the baryon systems has never been well established in experiments, while the CPV of mesons have been observed by decades. In this paper, we propose that the CPV of baryon decays can be generated with the rescatterings of a nucleon and a pion into some final states, i.e. or . Benefited by the fruitful data of scatterings, we can model-independently analyse the strong phases of -baryon decays using the partial wave amplitudes of scatterings. Avoiding the most difficult problem of non-perturbative dynamics, it makes a great advantage to predict the CPV of baryon decays with a relatively reliable understanding of the decay dynamics. We study the processes of and with or . It is found that the global CPV of the above processes in the invariant mass regions of scatterings are at the order of several percent. More importantly, the local CPV in some regions of the Dalitz plots can reach the order of 10%, or be even larger. Considering the predicted results and the experimental data samples, we strong suggest to measure the CPV of , which has a large possibility to achieve the first observation of CPV in the baryon system.

An agent in a world of possibilities: Introductory overview of the special issue

Possibilities are deeply engrained in psychology’s attempts to understand human behavior. This special issue offers diverse and novel insights into the role of possibilities. Two articles on morality show surprising links to mental illness and to counterfactual outcomes: People think doing immoral things is a sign of mental illness, and morally unwelcome outcomes stimulate retroactive imputation of more alternatives. Three articles address classic questions of determinism and choice: Possibilities are shaped by prior events, but pure determinism is useless for psychological theory, and meanwhile some perspectives in modern physics clash with psychological observations and experience. Imitation promotes prosociality but people are highly selective as to what they imitate.

Gravitational time dilation in a high school lesson

Abstract In almost all countries, the Ministry of Public Education has introduced the topics of special and general relativity into the high school curriculum. For example, in Italy the teaching of so-called modern physics (quantum mechanics and relativity) was introduced in the last year of high school. The students are approximately 18 years old and, although the arguments are addressed in an introductory and qualitative way, they are also a topic for the final exam. Einstein’s theory fascinates young students, but it is not always easy to explain the revolutionary effects it predicts. For this reason, we have organized a series of in-depth lessons trying to derive the space-time distortions in a way suitable for the young age of the students. In this frontline we summarize a derivation, suitable for high school pupils, regarding gravitational time dilation.

The Stellar Distribution in Ultrafaint Dwarf Galaxies Suggests Deviations from the Collisionless Cold Dark Matter Paradigm

Unraveling the nature of dark matter (DM) stands as a primary objective in modern physics. Here we present evidence suggesting deviations from the collisionless cold DM (CDM) paradigm. It arises from the radial distribution of stars in six ultrafaint dwarf (UFD) galaxies measured with the Hubble Space Telescope. After a trivial renormalization in size and central density, the six UFDs show the same stellar distribution, which happens to have a central plateau or core. Assuming spherical symmetry and isotropic velocities, the Eddington inversion method proves the observed distribution to be inconsistent with the characteristic potentials of CDM particles. Under such assumptions, the observed innermost slope of the stellar profile discards the UFDs to reside in a CDM potential at a ≥97% confidence level. The extremely low stellar mass of these galaxies, 103–104 M ⊙, prevents stellar feedback from modifying the shape of a CDM potential. Other conceivable explanations for the observed cores, like deviations from spherical symmetry and isotropy, tidal forces, and the exact form of the used CDM potential, are disfavored by simulations and/or observations. Thus, the evidence suggests that collisions among DM particles or other alternatives to CDM are likely shaping these galaxies. Many of these alternatives produce cored gravitational potentials, shown here to be consistent with the observed stellar distribution.

Preface

2024 3rd International Conference on Advances in Modern Physics Sciences and Engineering Technology (PSET 2024) was held in Wuhan, China during June 29-30, 2024. The PSET 2024 is organized by National Institute of High Mathematics (INdAM), Italy; Complex Engineering Systems (OA Journal Editorial Office) and technically supported by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; University of Victoria, Canada; Politecnico di Milano, Italy and Rongzhi Sciences and Technology Center, China. The conference program included keynote, oral, and poster presentations from scientists working in similar areas, aiming to establish platforms for collaborative research projects and to explore potential opportunities for international cooperation in the fields of Modern Physics Sciences and Engineering Technology. This year, we received an overwhelming response from the scientific community, with a total of 57 paper submissions. Each submission underwent a rigorous peer-review process, ensuring that only the highest quality research was selected. After careful consideration and evaluation by our esteemed review panel, 21 papers were accepted for presentation at the conference. The selected papers represent a diverse range of topics, reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of modern physics and engineering technology. From quantum state implementation based on topological insulators to cutting-edge advancements in engineering applications, the research presented here pushes the boundaries of current knowledge and opens new avenues for future exploration. We hope that the proceedings of PSET 2024 will inspire and stimulate further research and collaboration among scientists, engineers, and researchers worldwide. We want to thank all the authors who have contributed to this volume, as well as the Publication Editor, Organizing Committee, Scientific Committee, Keynote Speakers, Sponsors, and all the conference participants for their support of PSET 2024. We sincerely hope to see you again next year at PSET. Publication Editor Dr. Beddiaf ZAIDI University of Batna 1, Algeria List of Committee Members are available in this Pdf.