Physics World Research Articles

Paper cuts, half-pipes and deepfakes

Michael Banks picks his favourite stories and quotes from the weird and wonderful world of physics.

Meson mass and width: Deep learning approach

It is fascinating to predict the mass and width of the ordinary and exotic mesons solely based on their quark content and quantum numbers. Such prediction goes beyond conventional methodologies traditionally employed in hadron physics for calculating or estimating these quantities. The relation between the quantum numbers and the properties of the mesons, such as the mass and width, is complicated in the world of particle physics. However, the deep neural network (DNN) as a subfield of machine learning techniques provides a solution to this problem. By analyzing large datasets, deep learning algorithms can automatically identify complex patterns among the particles’ quantum numbers, and their mass and width, that would otherwise require complex calculations. In this study, we present two approaches using the DNNs to estimate the mass of some ordinary and exotic mesons. Also for the first time, the DNNs are trained to predict the width of ordinary and exotic mesons, whose widths have not been experimentally known. Our predictions obtained through the DNNs, will be useful for future experimental searches. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Black Gravity, or a Hidden History of Empire

This essay takes this occasion—the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Evelynn Hammonds’s germinal essay “Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality”—as an opportunity to explore the turn to spacetime and astrophysics in Black feminist writing and scholarship. This understudied tradition has unfolded concurrently alongside the rise of maritime and aquatic metaphors in Black studies. Focusing on the image of the black hole, the essay argues that this metaphor operates as a stimulus for confronting disciplinary objects of anxiety in Black studies, Caribbean studies, physics, and Black feminist studies. By analyzing origin stories that surround the moniker black hole in physics, the essay shows how imperial violence and notions of Black gender and sexual alterity suffused the term from its inception in the world of physics—a history that Black feminist theorists call to memory and challenge in their redeployment of the image.

Pistachios, LEGO bricks and space urine

Michael Banks picks his favourite stories and quotes from the weird and wonderful world of physics.

Peter Higgs: in his own words

Peter Higgs, who died in April aged 94, was an elusive figure who liked to stay out of the limelight. But in 2012 he agreed to an audio interview with Physics World editor Matin Durrani, who presents an edited version of it here for the first time and reveals how the meeting came about.

H1dd3n variab7es

Philip Moriarty outlines the physics principles he drew on to compose the new theme tune for Physics World podcasts.

The weird and wonderful world of physics

Featuring the noise produced by a school of fish, a quantum-inspired escape room and a new coffee lab, Michael Banks picks his favourite stories and quotes from the past month.

Russell's Theories of Events and Instants from the Perspective of Point-Free Ontologies in the Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School

We classify two of Bertrand Russell's theories of events within the point-free ontology. The first of such approaches was presented informally by Russell in ‘The World of Physics and the World of Sense’ (Lecture IV in Our Knowledge of the External World of 1914). Based on this theory, Russell sketched ways to construct instants as collections of events. This paper formalizes Russell's approach from 1914. We will also show that in such a reconstructed theory, we obtain all axioms of Russell's second theory from 1936 and all axioms of Thomason's theory of events from 1989. Russell's work certainly influenced the works of Stanisław Leśniewski, his student Alfred Tarski, and Czesław Lejewski – prominent members of the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS). We see our work in the tradition of the research of Leśniewski and Tarski. Building on the technical tools developed in this environment and in the spirit of the traditional research of the LWS, we engage here, in particular, with two classic works by Russell on fundamental ontology.

Reminiscences of Half a Century of Life in the World of Theoretical Physics.

Selma Lagerlöf said that culture is what remains when one has forgotten everything we had learned. Without any warranty, through ongoing research tasks, that I will ever attain this high level of wisdom, I simply share here reminiscences that have played, during my life, an important role in my incursions in science, mainly in theoretical physics. I end by presenting some perspectives for future developments.

Computer models as a means of improving the effectiveness of teaching physics

Computer models and programs are one of the main tools in education, therefore, the development of a plan for their development and use in the field of education is one of the main problems. The use of computer models will help to explore a new topic, a demonstration experiment and phenomena without violating safety regulations. Many experts believe that the computer currently makes it possible to make a qualitative breakthrough in the education system. Models of physical phenomena and experiments actively shape students' knowledge. In teaching a number of sections of the physics course, such as atomic and nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, and elementary particle physics, essential questions about conducting experiments are obvious. These sections relate to important areas of physics that deal with the study of phenomena and processes in the microcosm. Therefore, due to some difficulties in equipping physics classrooms, the computer acts as an assistant. In quantum physics and atomic physics, computer models are considered that help explain the phenomena under study, the course of processes, as well as methods of working with computer programs that simulate laboratory installations in this section, since physical laboratory assistants are an integral part of training. The use of computer models and programs for educational purposes gives students a unique opportunity to plunge into the world of quantum and atomic physics. This study analyzes the effectiveness of such models in the educational process, their impact on students' understanding of the basic concepts of quantum and atomic physics, and also compiles questionnaires based on these problems. The survey covers about 40 physics teachers. The work is based on the analysis of existing pedagogical experiments and research in the field of application of computer models for teaching physics. The focus is on assessing the impact of these models on the quality of knowledge and their ability to make complex concepts accessible and understandable to students. The obtained results can serve as a basis for further improvement of methods of teaching quantum and atomic physics using computer programs. The introduction of computer programs can help the student create an effective learning environment for his work at his own pace and in collaboration with the class. It can be said that the use of models of physical processes in preparing students for effective learning opens up great opportunities for creating high-quality and new forms and methods, the use of computer models of physical phenomena plays an important role. Of particular importance in the development of students' abilities to observe, think, generalize based on observed facts, and predict the course of the observed process.

Principle and state-of-art applications of quantum information

Al. Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for their experimental verification of the violation of Bell's inequality by quantum mechanics using entangled photons, which pioneered the science of quantum information; in the same year, the 28th Solvay Conference on Physics, with the theme "Quantum Information In the same year, the 28th Solvay Conference on Physics, with the theme of "Quantum Information Physics", reviewed the development of quantum information in the last decade and the future direction. It is clear that the world of physics is now focused on the subsequent progress of quantum mechanics. In this paper, I will introduce the background of quantum information and explain in detail, clearly and thoroughly, the basic theory of quantum information and its specific applications. By describing the two fundamental and most important properties of quantum information, quantum entanglement and quantum unclonable, quantum information will give the reader a comprehensive understanding of the significance and usefulness of quantum information. This paper aims to help physics students to build up their basic knowledge of quantum information by explaining the basic theory of quantum information and helping them to expand their knowledge of quantum information.

Cyclotrons: Advancements, Challenges, and Their Pivotal Role in Science and Medicine

Cyclotrons have been pivotal instruments in the world of physics and medicine since their inception. This research paper explores the history, advancements, and challenges of cyclotrons. It also discusses their crucial role in cancer treatment and the unforeseen implications in the development of the atomic bomb. Furthermore, it introduces an innovative concept for improving cyclotron efficiency through material and magnetic property enhancements.

Transdisciplinary role of physical and mathematical disciplines in modern natural science and engineering education

Introduction. In recent decades, a gradual degradation of mathematics and physics training in schools and universities has begun. Obviously, this has caused a significant decrease in the quality of professional training of students in the conditions of commercialisation and continuous reforms of education, and its chaotic digitalisation. At the same time, modern mathematics and physics have become the leader of the transdisciplinary trend in the natural, engineering, and other sciences of the digital era. The transdisciplinary trend generates a universal methodology capable of solving complex multifactorial interdisciplinary problems of nature and society. As a result of the transdisciplinary trend in science, such scientific fields as cybernetics, general systems theory, catastrophe theory, synergetics, artificial intelligence, big data, etc. have emerged. All these concepts were developed on the basis of the achievements of mathematics and physics over the past 70–80 years, which gave rise to the most unique practical achievements in modern, natural, and technical sciences.Aim. The present research aims to explore transdisciplinarity role of physical and mathematical disciplines in modern natural science and engineering education.Methodology and research methods. The system-based approach was used to analyse the role of mathematical and physical science systems in modern education. The synergetic approach became the basis for the study of the transdisciplinary trend of these systems in historical retrospect. In the methodology of these approaches, an important role was played by the methods of students’ holistic scientific worldviews formation, including ideas about the modern picture of the world of mathematics and physics. The authors applied the methods to develop student systems thinking (with its important quality of nonlinearity), which underlies the solution of multifactorial interdisciplinary tasks of their professional activity.Results. The results of the analysis of the transdisciplinary role of physical and mathematical disciplines indicate the fundamental importance of the unique potential of these disciplines in the natural science and engineering education in the era of the computer revolution.Scientific novelty. The authors identified, justified and characterised transdisciplinary ideas and methods (in mathematics and physics), which bring natural and engineering sciences to a higher level of cognition, thus contributing to improving the quality of natural science and engineering training of students at universities using a computer.Practical significance. The research materials emphasise considerable practical importance to implement a transdisciplinary approach in didactics and methods of teaching physical and mathematical disciplines in the system of natural science, and engineering education. The research findings will be of interest to educational theorists and teachers, who conduct professional training of students of natural science and engineering fields and to everyone who is interested in the prosperous future of the educational system.

Spin 12 from gluons

The theta vacuum in QCD is obtained from the standard vacuum, after twisting by the exponential of the Chern–Simons term. However, a question remains–what is the quantum operator [Formula: see text] for winding number 1? We construct this operator [Formula: see text] in this note. The Poincaré rotation generators commute with it only if they are augmented by the spin [Formula: see text] representation of the Lorentz group, coming from large gauge transformations. This result is analogous to the well-known “spin-isopin” mixing result due to Jackiw and Rebbi [Phys. Rev. Lett. 36, 1116 (1976)], and Hasenfratz and ’t Hooft [Phys. Rev. Lett. 36, 1119 (1976)]. There is a similar result in fuzzy physics literature of Balachandran, Kurkcuoglu and Vaidya [Lectures on Fuzzy and Fuzzy Susy Physics (World Scientific Publishing Company, 2007)]. This shows that states can drastically affect representations of observables. This fact is further shown by charged states dressed by infrared clouds. Following Mund, Rehren and Schroer [arXiv:hep-th/2109.10342], we find that Lorentz invariance is spontaneously broken in these sectors. This result has been extended earlier to QCD (Balachandran, Nair, Pinzul, Reyes-Lega and Vaidya [arXiv:2112.08631 [hep-th]], reference given in the Final Remarks) where even the global QCD group is shown to be broken. It is argued that the escort fields of Mund, Rehren and Schroer [arXiv:hep-th/2109.10342] are the Higgs fields for Lorentz and color breaking. They are string-localized fields where the strings live in a union of de Sitter spaces. Their oscillations and those of the infrared cloud can generate the associated Goldstone modes.

Uncertainty principle and complementary variables

The two most important areas in modern physics are quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. Unlike classical physics, where Newton's mechanics dominates, these two areas change human beings' fundamental view of the universe. One of the theories that build up the base of quantum mechanics is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Starting from a thought experiment, Heisenberg's microscope in the setting of classical physics, Werner Heisenberg built a bridge between classical and quantum physics by presenting a counterintuitive outcome in the thought experiment. Since then, the observer of a physics phenomenon is no longer a bystander. The behavior of observation became a part of the physical experiment. To come up with a mathematical expression that can describe such a new discovery, Heisenberg came up with matrix mechanics and the concept of complementary variables. There is a trade-off between a pair of complementary variables. When one of them is measured precisely, meaning the information of that variable is known on a large scale, the other variable can not be measured precisely, meaning there is no way to know enough information about the other variable. The principle indicates a fundamental limit on what human beings can know about the unknown variables. The discoveries of other complementary variables help physicists know the new image of the physics world under new rules.

Teleorman’da Delilik: Kaos ve Düzen

Chaos theory has emerged as a controversial scientific theory in the world of physics contrasting with the settled Newtonian theory supporting that the world and the universe have determinist and linear characteristics working in a regular and predictable way in the basis of causalities. Chaos theory offers the new world non-linearity, unpredictability, Fractal geometry against Euclid geometry and dependence on initial conditions. This theory born in physics has caused an enormous impact on social sciences, as well. Literature as the close follower of up-to-date theories and movements cannot keep away itself from this new theory. Numerous studies have been carried out in the West to interpret literary texts from different aspects –thematically or structurally- based on Chaos theory. This article aims to analyze Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest issuing the Romanian Revolution from a modernist and surrealist way via key terms of Chaos theory with respect to theme and structure. Thus, Chaos theory and its key terms will be defined and its applications on literature will be discussed from different perspectives. Finally, Mad Forest will be analyzed regarding some key elements such as order within disorder, nonlinearity and dependence on initial conditions presented by perspectives of Chaos theory.

What’s in a rename?

Robert P Crease reveals what Physics World readers told him about whether we should airbrush out physicists who’ve done bad things in the past – and what he thinks.

Keparalelan Fisika Modern dengan Nilai-Nilai Tasawuf

The world of physics for scientists is no longer a materialist empirical world, but leads to efforts to realize spirituality through science to find the highest essence of science. There is a parallel in thought between Sufism and modern physics, where Sufism is based on direct understanding into the natural world of reality and modern physics is based on on observations of natural phenomena and scientific experiments which are interpreted and communicated through words which will become too abstract when close to reality which causes awareness of facts. Sufism has very many values in modern physics, but this may be unnoticed by the Muslim community. Whereas in Sufism which takes the verses of the Qur'an there are many things that are actually in modern physics quantized in the form of formulas, which we can take as the rationality of the highest existence of the Creator (Allah Subhaanahu Wa Ta'ala). so that modern physics can be used as an analysis of the verses of the Qur'an in demonstrating the essence of spirituality. This study uses the Library Research method with the main data source from the library in the form of books, articles, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other written sources. To collect data through several stages, namely data inventory through collection of scientific works. The results of the research show that there are parallels between the thoughts in Sufism and modern physics regarding matter in this universe.

К вопросу формирования математической онтологии: историко-философский аспект

The article analyzes the possibilities of mathematics’ application to the physical reality from the historical-philosophical point of view. The undertaken analysis of the specific works of natural scientists of the past shows that the well-known thesis of Aristotle’s philosophy about the impossibility of applying mathematics in the “sublunary” world requires clarification. Most of the naturalists before Galileo’s time were undoubtedly Aristotelians. Accepting the qualitative variabil­ity of the “sublunary” world in Aristotle’s philosophy, when turning to physics they put into use, starting with Ptolemy, the possibility of a mathematical de­scription of the world. In this connection one of the main principles was the ad­justment of “projecting the law of heaven onto the earth”, which has been used in different ways. Aristotle’s philosophy forbade the application of mathematical laws in the world of physics, specifically in the so-called “sublunary world”. This was because in this area of being prevail four primary elements – fire, air, earth, and water, subject to continuous change, emergence, and destruction. From Aristotle’s point of view this could not be described within the framework of a mathematical approach. These changes are qualitative and this qualitative­ness should be reflected by corresponding physics. Such qualitative physics op­posed the Pythagorean and Platonic tradition, that allowed the use of mathe­matics in the physical world. In the course of history, however, exactly the philosophy of Aristotle held the dominant position. A thorough analysis of the natural scientists’ works who adhered to the Aristotelian point of view shows that all of them allowed the possibility of applying mathematics in the physical world

Raising impact of particle physics outreach through gamification

The International Masterclass - Hands on Particle Physics is an outreach event proposed by the International Particle Physics Outreach Group since 2004. Its traditional format had a worldwide success during the last years, reaching thousands of high school students and introducing them to the world of particle physics. During the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemics forced all the groups proposing the activity to find an online alternative to preserve the spirit of the initiative. The local committee of University of Trento proposed an online event, divided into several short events carried out over two weeks. The introduction of an analysis challenge among the students has made it possible to obtain a very good response and to achieve, with less than 20 students, enough statistics to discuss physical results of the analysis. The contribution describes the details of the organization, results, and feedback from the students, with some proposals to improve the experience for the next years.