First-ever atomic freeze-frame of liquid water

Amazing stuff! At attosecond timescale. "Scientists stop the motion of atoms to watch electrons move in liquid water."

"In an experiment akin to stop-motion photography, scientists have isolated the energetic movement of an electron while “freezing” the motion of the much larger atom it orbits in a sample of liquid water. ...
a new window into the electronic structure of molecules in the liquid phase on a timescale previously unattainable with X-rays. ..."

From the abstract:

"Attosecond-pump/attosecond-probe experiments have long been sought as the most straightforward method to observe electron dynamics in real time. Although numerous successes have been achieved with overlapped near infrared femtosecond and extreme ultraviolet attosecond pulses combined with theory, true attosecond-pump/attosecond-probe experiments have been limited. We used a synchronized attosecond x-ray pulse pair from an x-ray free electron laser to study the electronic response to valence ionization in liquid water via all x-ray attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (AX-ATAS). Our analysis showed that the AX-ATAS response is confined to the subfemtosecond timescale, eliminating any hydrogen atom motion and demonstrating experimentally that the 1b1 splitting in the x-ray emission spectrum is related to dynamics and is not evidence for two structural motifs in ambient liquid water."

First-ever atomic freeze-frame of liquid wate | EurekAlert! Scientists report the first look at electrons moving in real-time in liquid water; findings open up a whole new field of experimental physics

First-ever atomic freeze-frame of liquid water Findings open a whole new field of experimental physics

Attosecond-pump attosecond-probe x-ray spectroscopy of liquid water (no public access)

Pixxel’s hyperspectral orbital imagery attracts investment from Google

Good news! This is a little different than Google Street View! 😊

"... Hyperspectral imagery startup Pixxel has closed $36 million in funding as it prepares to roll out new remote sensing and analytics capabilities to customers.

The LA and Bangalore-based startup also scored a new strategic investor: Google, the tech giant that’s as well known for its mapping products as it is for its search engine. While Google led the Series B funding round, this does not mark the start of its relationship with Pixxel ...

Hyperspectral imaging uses a spectrometer to identify the spectral signature of objects. Taken from space, this type of imaging unlocks an enormous degree of insight into our planet — from detecting gas leaks to identifying specific types of minerals or plants. Pixxel has been developing this technology since 2019, and it put three demonstration satellites into orbit last year. ...
to development of the next version of its satellites, called Honeybees, which will be even larger and provide even greater resolution. ..."

Pixxel’s hyperspectral orbital imagery attracts investment from Google | TechCrunch

Color image versus hyperspectral image. Still looks mouth watering and hungry?

Images captured and analysed in 100s of wavelengths rather than 10s of wavelengths as done today.

Scientists make quantum spectrometers a million times more sensitive

Amazing stuff with potential!

"A team of quantum engineers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has developed a new tool for measuring the ‘spin’ of subatomic particles with an unprecedented level of accuracy. The device, which is over a million times more sensitive than conventional spin resonance spectrometers, could revolutionize the fields of chemistry, biology, physics, and medicine. ...
conventional spectrometers require billions or trillions of spin measurements to generate accurate readings, making it difficult to measure microscopic samples, two-dimensional materials, and high-quality solar cells. ..."

"... In fields of research such as chemistry, biology, physics and medicine, the tool that is used to measure spins is called a spin resonance spectrometer. Normally, commercially produced spectrometers require billions to trillions of spins to get an accurate reading, but ... were able to measure spins of electrons in the order of thousands, meaning the new tool was about a million times more sensitive.
This is quite a feat, as there are a whole range of systems that cannot be measured with commercial tools, such as microscopic samples, two-dimensional materials and high-quality solar cells, which simply have too few spins to create a measurable signal. ...

While other highly sensitive spectrometers using superconducting circuits had been developed in the past, they required multiple components, were incompatible with magnetic fields and had to be operated in very cold environments using expensive “dilution refrigerators”, which reach temperatures down to 0.01 Kelvin.

In this new development, A/Prof. Pla says he and the team managed to integrate the components on a single chip.

“Our new technology integrates several important parts of the spectrometer into one device and is compatible with relatively large magnetic fields. This is important, since measure the spins they need to be placed in a field of about 0.5 Tesla, which is ten thousand times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field.

“Further, our device operated at a temperature more than 10 times higher than previous demonstrations, meaning we don’t need to use a dilution refrigerator.” ..."

From the abstract (Don't ask me what that all means! 😊 I don't like abstracts that are written only for area specialists to understand!):
"The use of superconducting microresonators together with quantum-limited Josephson parametric amplifiers has enhanced the sensitivity of pulsed electron spin resonance (ESR) measurements by more than four orders of magnitude. So far, the microwave resonators and amplifiers have been designed as separate components due to the incompatibility of Josephson junction–based devices with magnetic fields. This has produced complex spectrometers and raised technical barriers toward adoption of the technique. Here, we circumvent this issue by coupling an ensemble of spins directly to a weakly nonlinear and magnetic field–resilient superconducting microwave resonator. We perform pulsed ESR measurements with a 1-pL mode volume containing 6 × 107 spins and amplify the resulting signals within the device. When considering only those spins that contribute to the detected signals, we find a sensitivity of 2.8×10^3spins/Hz√

 for a Hahn echo sequence at a temperature of 400 mK. In situ amplification is demonstrated at fields up to 254 mT, highlighting the technique’s potential for application under conventional ESR operating conditions."

Scientists make quantum spectrometers a million times more sensitive

Quantum engineers have designed a new tool to probe nature with extreme sensitivity

In situ amplification of spin echoes within a kinetic inductance parametric amplifier (open access)

Fig. 1. Device design and resonator characterization.

Artificial intelligence powers record-breaking all-in-one miniature spectrometers

Amazing stuff! This could be a major breakthrough! The possibilities are enormous! Will your next smartphone also come with a spectrometer?

"... Now, an international team of researchers, including the University of Cambridge, have designed a miniaturised spectrometer that breaks all current resolution records, and does so in a much smaller package, thanks to computational programmes and artificial intelligence.
The new miniaturised devices could be used in a broad range of sectors, from checking the quality of food to analysing starlight or detecting faint clues of life in outer space. ...
The result is an all-in-one spectrometer thousands of times smaller than current commercial systems. At the same time, it offers performance comparable to benchtop systems. In other words, these new spectrometers will provide portable alternatives to uncover otherwise invisible information, without even going into the lab. ...
The detector uses van der Waals heterostructures – a ‘sandwich’ of different ingredients, including graphene, molybdenum disulfide, and tungsten diselenide. Different combinations of material components enable light detection beyond the visible spectrum, as far as the near-infrared region. This means the spectrometer detects more than just colour, enabling applications such as chemical analysis and night vision. ..."

"Optical spectrometers can measure the intensity of light with spectral resolution. Although laboratory benchtop spectrometer systems offer high resolution and wide spectral range, their large size hampers them from being more widely adopted for general consumer products, such as wearable electronics. The miniaturization of spectrometers is crucial to making them cheaper and easier to integrate with other devices, which can help expand the use of such a powerful analytical tool. There is a wide range of potential applications for cheap and small-sized spectrometers, from detecting counterfeit pharmaceuticals and banknotes to monitoring specific biosignals. On page 296 of this issue, Yoon et al. (1) present a design for an ultraminiaturized spectrometer with performance approaching that of benchtop systems."

"Miniaturizing spectrometers

High-resolution spectrometry tends to be associated with bench-sized machines. Recent efforts on computational spectrometers have shown that this physical footprint can be shrunk by using nanowires and two-dimensional (2D) materials, but these devices are often associated with limited performance. Yoon et al. developed a single-detector computational spectrometer using an electrically tunable spectral response of a single junction comprising 2D van der Waal materials (see the Perspective by Quereda and Castellanos-Gomez). The electrically tunable spectral response and high performance of the tiny detector are promising for the further development of computational spectrometers."

From the abstract:

"Miniaturized computational spectrometers, which can obtain incident spectra using a combination of device spectral responses and reconstruction algorithms, are essential for on-chip and implantable applications. Highly sensitive spectral measurement using a single detector allows the footprints of such spectrometers to be scaled down while achieving spectral resolution approaching that of benchtop systems. We report a high-performance computational spectrometer based on a single van der Waals junction with an electrically tunable transport-mediated spectral response. We achieve high peak wavelength accuracy (∼0.36 nanometers), high spectral resolution (∼3 nanometers), broad operation bandwidth (from ∼405 to 845 nanometers), and proof-of-concept spectral imaging. Our approach provides a route toward ultraminiaturization and offers unprecedented performance in accuracy, resolution, and operation bandwidth for single-detector computational spectrometers."

Artificial intelligence powers record-breaking all-in-one miniature spectrometers | University of Cambridge Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to replace optical and mechanical components, researchers have designed a tiny spectrometer that breaks all current resolution records.

An ultraminiaturized spectrometer (no public access) Scaling down spectrometers could allow their application in consumer devices.

Miniaturized spectrometers with a tunable van der Waals junction (no public access)

On-chip spectrometer on a fingertip