Memory matters for quantum atomic motion on metals

New findings with implications for heterogeneous catalysis and energy storage

05-Jun-2025 - George Trenins and Mariana Rossi of the Lise Meitner Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have developed an efficient technique for simulating the impact of electronic friction on quantum atomic motion at metallic interfaces. Applying it to hydrogen ...

Exotic vibrations in new materials

New insights show universal applicability of carbyne as a sensor

28-May-2025 - For the design of future materials, it is important to understand how the individual atoms inside a material interact with each other quantum mechanically. Previously inexplicable vibrational states between carbon chains (carbyne) and nanotubes have puzzled materials scientists. Researchers from ...

Chatbot opens computational chemistry to nonexperts

New tool turns complex process of simulating molecules in solution into a user-friendly chat

11-Apr-2025 - Advanced computational software is streamlining quantum chemistry research by automating many of the processes of running molecular simulations. The complicated design of these software packages, however, often limits their use to theoretical chemists trained in specialized computing techniques. ...

How water hides its quantum secret

Researchers show experimentally why water and heavy water behave similarl

10-Apr-2025 - Almost three-quarters of the earth are covered by water. Water is the most abundant, but also strangest liquid - for example, it has its maximum density at 4 °C. Researchers around Yuki Nagata and Mischa Bonn at the MPI for Polymer Research have now studied normal water - H2O - and heavy water - ...

Artificial intelligence helps explore chemistry frontiers

Machine learning helps simulate reactive molecular dynamics for research and discovery

28-Mar-2024 - The ability to simulate the behavior of systems at the atomic level represents a powerful tool for everything from drug design to materials discovery. A team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers has developed machine learning interatomic potentials that predict molecular energies and ...

Spectroscopy and theory shed light on excitons in semiconductors

Research team make extremely fast, precise images for first time

21-Mar-2024 - From solar panels on our roofs to the new OLED TV screens, many everyday electronic devices simply wouldn’t work without the interaction between light and the materials that make up semiconductors. A new category of semiconductors is based on organic molecules, which largely consist of carbon, ...

New method measures the 3D position of individual atoms

The method developed at the Universities of Bonn and Bristol uses an ingenious physical principle

07-Mar-2024 - Since more than a decade it has been possible for physicists to accurately measure the location of individual atoms to a precision of smaller than one thousandth of a millimeter using a special type of microscope. However, this method has so far only provided the x and y coordinates. Information ...

When electrons slowly vanish during cooling

04-Aug-2023 - Many substances change their properties when they are cooled below a certain critical temperature. Such a phase transition occurs, for example, when water freezes. However, in certain metals there are phase transitions that do not exist in the macrocosm. They arise because of quantum mechanics. ...

Quantum Chemistry: Molecules caught tunneling

Breakthrough after 15 years of research

03-Mar-2023 - Quantum effects can play an important role in chemical reactions. Physicists led by Roland Wester of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, have now for the first time observed a quantum mechanical tunneling reaction in experiments. The observation can also be described exactly in theory. With the ...

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 goes to three quantum researchers from France, USA and Austria

Entangled states – from theory to technology

04-Oct-2022 - The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 to Alain Aspect (Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France), John F. Clauser (J.F. Clauser & Assoc., Walnut Creek, CA, USA) and Anton Zeilinger (University of Vienna, Austria) “for ...