Particle accelerator-based radiation sources are an indispensable tool in modern physics and medicine. Some of the larger specimens, such as the LHC in Geneva or the European XFEL in Hamburg, are among the most complex (and costly) scientific instruments ever constructed. Now, laser physicists at the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP), which is run jointly…
Schrodinger’s Cat Inspires Quantum Communication Research
In 1935 Erwin Schrödinger formulated a thought experiment designed to capture the paradoxical nature of quantum physics. The crucial element of this gedanken experiment is a cat that is simultaneously dead and alive. Since Schrödinger proposed his “cat paradox, physicists have been thinking about ways to create such superposition states experimentally. A group of researchers…