Kolloquien

The Standard Model of particle physics is incredibly successful but glaringly incomplete. Among the questions left open is the striking imbalance of matter and antimatter in our universe, which inspires experiments to compare the fundamental properties of matter/antimatter conjugates with high precision. The BASE collaboration at the antiproton decelerator of CERN is performing such high-precision comparisons with protons and antiprotons.   mehr...

Modern machine learning and artificial intelligence are starting to fundamentally change how we analyze huge volumes of data in particle physics and adjacent scientific disciplines. These breakthroughs promise new insights into major scientific questions such as the nature of dark matter or the existence of physical phenomena beyond the standard model.   mehr...

Superconductivity is a fascinating state of matter that transforms metals at very low temperature into perfect conductors and perfect diamagnets. This enables numerous technical applications for magnetic levitation, electric current transport without loss and for quantum information technology. A desired but rare type of unconventional superconductivity with possible uses in topological quantum computing is one where the superconducting condensate is odd under inversion symmetry, so-called odd-parity superconductivity. Only a handful of uranium-based materials have this property and it is usually explained by the presence of ferromagnetism enforcing a parallel alignment of the electrons forming the Cooper pair.   mehr...

Recent rapid progress in applications of machine learning has also illustrated that there is an exponential growth of required resources, especially for advanced applications like large-language models. This makes it all the more urgent to explore possible alternatives to current digital artificial neural networks. The field of neuromorphic computing sets itself the goal to identify suitable physical architectures that enable us to perform machine learning tasks in a highly parallel and much more energy-efficient manner.   mehr...

Particle accelerators are ubiquitous tools across scientific, industrial, and medical domains, pivotal not only in advancing particle physics but also in applications such as sterilization and radiotherapy in modern healthcare facilities. Traditionally, these accelerators harness microwave fields to impart momentum to swift electrons or other charged particles.   mehr...

Particles in the atmosphere - aerosols - may serve as cloud condensation nuclei. Increases in aerosol concentrations thus change cloud droplet concentrations and thus enhance the brightness of clouds. Such aerosol-cloud interactions exert a cooling effect on climate.   mehr...