Physicists figure out how an electric field can switch off superconductivity
Transistors are fundamental to microchips and modern electronics. Invented by Bardeen and Brattain in 1947, their development is one of the 20th century’s key scientific milestones. Transistors work by controlling electric current using an electric field, which requires semiconductors. Unlike metals, semiconductors have fewer free electrons and an energy band gap that makes it harder
Physicists recreate extreme quantum vacuum effects
Using advanced computational modeling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior Técnico at the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the “quantum vacuum”—a state once assumed to be empty, but which quantum physics predicts is full