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In a game of one-upmanship, a Chinese team of physicists has figured out how to entangle eight photons simultaneously and to observe them in action; the previous record was six. In a paper published in arXiv, the team from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, describe how they were able to convert a single photon into two entangled photons, using a nonlinear crystal, and then how they repeated that process with one of the paired photons produced, while holding the other in place, producing another pair, and then did it repeatedly until they had eight photons all entangled together, all held in place and all observable for a period of time.
(PhysOrg.com) -- After several hours of exposure to sunlight, silicon solar cells experience light-induced degradation, which can decrease their efficiency by up to 10%. In a new study, scientists have attempted to detect the oxygen dimer (O2i) in the predicted charge state that is widely considered to play a key role in this light-induced degradation. However, their search has been unsuccessful, casting doubt on the accepted degradation mechanism of silicon solar cells.
Chemistry news
In synthetic chemistry, ‘carbene’ species—compounds bearing a carbon atom with two unpaired electrons—have a ferocious reputation. Left uncontrolled, they will react with almost any molecule they meet. But by harnessing this vigor with transition metals, chemists can turn carbenes into powerful chemical transformation reagents. Now, Zhaomin Hou and colleagues from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Wako report a new class of compounds that contain multiple carbene units in one extraordinary structure: a cube-shaped molecule stabilized by ligand-protected rare-earth metals.
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