news 2021

The quantum world and our everyday world are very different places. In a publication that appeared as the "Editor's Suggestion" in Physical Review A this week, UvA physicists Jasper van Wezel and Lotte Mertens and their colleagues investigate how the act of measuring a quantum particle transforms it into an everyday object.

What does it mean when we say that something is extremely cold? A physicist's answer would be: this means that atoms and molecules barely move. For several decades now, physicists have been developing techniques to create such ultracold states of matter, using lasers to bring gases into the regime where quantum mechanics reigns.

The laws of quantum mechanics allow for the existence of 'quasi-particles': excitations in materials that behave exactly like ordinary particles. A major advantage of quasi-particles over ordinary particles is that their properties can be engineered. In a Nature Materials News & Views article this week, IoP physicist Erik van Heumen describes recent experiments where even the interactions between quasi-particles can be tuned.

What does a quantum theory of gravity have in common with electrons in a 'strange' metal? At first sight: not much, but this week in Nature a Dutch NWO consortium, including researchers Jake Ayres, Maarten Berben and Nigel Hussey (Radboud University), Jan Zaanen (Leiden University) and Erik van Heumen (University of Amsterdam) reports on new experimental findings that may point towards such a link after all.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants worth €800,000 each to 13 experienced researchers from the UvA and the Amsterdam UMC, location AMC. The grants will enable them to develop their own innovative lines of research and set up research groups over the next five years. The Vidi grants are aimed at experienced researchers who have already conducted successful research for a number of years after their PhD.

To solve practical issues, sometimes all we have to do is study nature. An often quoted example is that of the gecko, a small animal known for the phenomenal adhesive strength in its feet, which allows it to walk on walls and even ceilings. The phenomenon led to 'gecko tape', a strongly adhesive DIY-tape.

Water can freeze from liquid to solid ice or boil into a gas. In the kitchen these so-called phase transitions aren't smooth, but at high pressure their discontinuous nature is smoothed out. An international team of physicists, including UvA-IoP physicists Philippe Corboz and Schelto Crone, has now discovered the same behaviour in certain quantum magnets.

Theoretical physicists have taken a new step in understanding the so-called neutrinoless double-beta decay. This decay in atomic nuclei has never been seen before, but an observation would be an important signal that the standard particle theory is not satisfactory. Theoretician Jordy de Vries of the University of Amsterdam and Nikhef is publishing with colleagues a follow-up to a paper that caused a stir in 2018.

A fabric's physical properties, such as its wettability and porosity, affect the dynamics of an impacting droplet. Understanding these effects can help forensic scientists draw a better picture of a crime scene. In a paper that appeared in Physics of Fluids, UvA-physicist Thijs de Goede and collaborators from UvA, ETH Zürich, Empa (Switzerland) and the University of Sherbrooke (Canada) develop a physics-based approach to blood droplet analysis.

With the temperatures outside below zero and the speed skating world championships around the corner, ice is on everyone's mind. One thing we all know: ice is slippery - but why? This seemingly simple physics question turns out to have a remarkably intricate answer. In a new publication that appeared in Physical Review X this week, a group of UvA physicists shed new light on how temperature, pressure and the speed of the skater combine to make it possible to skate on ice.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Universities of Konstanz and Amsterdam have uncovered a new state of matter, liquid glass, with previously unknown structural elements. The discovery leads to new insights into the nature of glass and its transitions. While glass is a truly ubiquitous material that we use on a daily basis, it also represents a major scientific conundrum.