Research

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.

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.

Společný výzkum vědců z NCK MATCA Fyzikálního ústavu AV ČR a průmyslových partnerů otvírá možnosti použití nových technologií slibujících významný pokrok v jaderném inženýrství a vývoji supravodivých materiálů. 

May 1st 2024 marked the 20th anniversary of the Czech Republic joining the European Union (EU). The past 20 years have profoundly changed the Czech research landscape, German-Czech research cooperation and the European Research Area. “Science has greatly benefitted from the possibilities that Europe offers during the last decades. Mobility is a striking example, funding opportunities are another,” says Max Planck President Patrick Cramer at the opening ceremony for the first three Dioscuri Centres in the Czech Republic on 17 May 2024. 

The highest energy cosmic ray particles are likely to penetrate much deeper into the atmosphere than previously thought. The incoming particles are therefore likely to be much heavier. New and fundamental insights emerge from a method that generalises the approach to predicting models of cosmic particle collisions with the Earth's atmosphere. The accuracy of Jakub Vícha's method has been confirmed by hundreds of international scientists at the Pierre Auger Observatory, as shown in a study published these days in Physical Review D.

Theoretical interpretation often steps into the spotlight first once breakthrough experiments have been finished. A much more exciting situation, especially in the realm of spectral properties of magnetic materials, is when a theoretical prediction persuades researchers to undertake a specific measurement approach, and subsequently, the collected data align precisely with the prediction. Research that resulted in a paper published last week in Physical Review Letters, where an international team reported that the way light is absorbed by a magnetic substance varies according to its state of polarization, followed just this less common line of development.