The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has begun 18 to 24 months of running at a 7-TeV center-of-mass energy—more than three times that achieved at the Fermilab collider. Before they can start to look for signals of new physics, however, the four LHC experiments, ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb, must understand the huge spectrum of background events.Read More

Using a unique hybrid nanostructure, University of Maryland researchers have shown a new type of light-matter interaction and also demonstrated the first full quantum control of qubit spin within very tiny colloidal nanostructures (a few nanometers), thus taking a key step forward in efforts to create a quantum computer.

Published in the July 1 issue of Nature, their research builds on work by the same Maryland research team published in March in the journal Science (3-26-10). According to the authors and outside experts, the new findings further advance the promise these new nanostructures hold for quantum computing and for new, more efficient, energy generation technologies (such as photovoltaic cells), as well as for other technologies that are based on light-matter interactions like biomarkers. Read More

An article regarding the observations - by Matthew Paoletti, Michael Fisher and Daniel Lathrop - and measurements made of quantized vortex reconnection in superfluid helium appears in the July 2010 Physics Today's Search and Discovery Column. Read More

The American Physical Society has awarded Jim Drake the 2010 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics. The prize is the highest honor bestowed to plasma physicists by the APS. His citation and prize will be presented at the annual meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics, November 8-12, 2010 in Chicago, Illinois.

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In May a University of Maryland-led team of scientists reported previously unknown features in the energy spectra of cosmic ray nuclei. Their findings contradict aspects of a prevailing model for how cosmic rays from outside our solar system may be accelerated to their very high energies by the expanding shock waves generated when massive stars explode as supernovas. Read More