News

The sensitivity of the SST-1M pair of Cherenkov telescopes at very high energies exceeds that of any existing Cherenkov imaging telescope in the world. This surprising news was presented at a conference in Milan by Jakub Jurýšek. At the Institute of Physics, together with his team, he is developing software that allows stereoscopic reconstruction of observed cosmic gamma-ray showers and subsequent imaging of the sources of these gamma photons in space. 

Extreme and powerful objects in the Universe, such as supermassive black holes and supernovae, emit gamma rays. The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will become the world’s most powerful ground-based observatory in high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. Its Co-Spokesperson Rene Ong, who visited FZU this spring, described the scientific high-energy odyssey.

Scintillation materials play a crucial role wherever ionizing radiation or accelerated particle beams need to be monitored. There are increased requirements on them for example in accelerators in industry, electron beam detection in scanning electron microscopes, or in hybrid detectors for the new generation of medical imaging devices in positron emission tomography. 

The first ground-based wide-field observatory designed to detect very high to ultra-high energy gamma rays in the Southern Hemisphere will be built in the Atacama Astronomical Park in Chile. The observatory will study radiation from space that is emitted by the most extreme objects in the universe, such as black holes and neutron stars, gamma-ray bursts and supernovae.

Enthusiasm for science is the driving force behind success. This is also demonstrated by Lindau Meetings, where for decades young scientists from all over the world have been meeting Nobel laureates. "The atmosphere of togetherness and mutual support they experience there is an invaluable source of inspiration," says this year's participant Petr Veřtát, a postdoctoral fellow from the Department of Magnetic Measurements and Materials at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

For Hana Lísalová, head of the Laboratory of Functional Biointerfaces from the Division of Optics, this year's fifth edition of the International Conference on Bioinspired and Zwitterionic Materials, which was held at Cornell University in the USA, meant a significant accomplishment. She received the prestigious Mid-career Award for her contribution to the development of a new generation of antifouling layers with biofunctional elements, biosensors and biomimetic systems.

A research team from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences led by Zdeněk Hubička and Jiří Olejníček, in collaboration with teams from Japan's Osaka University and New Zealand's Unitec Institute of Technology, have achieved significant progress in the development of ultrafast luminescent layers of zinc oxides. 

Scientists from the Joint Laboratory of Optics, a collaboration between Palacký University and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, have significantly refined and improved the efficiency of quantum entanglement tests, which play a crucial role in the development of quantum computers, by incorporating artificial intelligence.

ICHEP2024, the largest international conference on high energy physics, attracted 1400 participants from 55 countries to Prague. In addition to thousands of lectures, scientists were also offered three panels – two dealing with the future of particle physics and its benefits for society and the third on the importance of education and popularisation of science.