All posts tagged: ultrafast

Technion scientists measure ultrafast quantum light pulses for the first time

Technion scientists measure ultrafast quantum light pulses for the first time

Published by Jenni Sidey

A light pulse is technically empty, yet capable of carrying a trillion photons in a single burst. That is part of what makes bright squeezed vacuum, or BSV, so strange. It is formally treated as a vacuum state of light, meaning its average electric field is zero. Yet in single shots, its quantum fluctuations can swell into extremely intense pulses. In the new Technion study, researchers finally pinned down how long those individual pulses last, and the answer lands deep in the ultrafast realm: about 27.2 femtoseconds. The work, published in Optica, comes from researchers at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, led by Dr. Michael Krüger and Ph.D. student Yuval Kern. The team also included Prof. Oren Cohen, Prof. Pavel Sidorenko, and Prof. Ido Kaminer, with contributions from Andrei Rasputnyi of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. Dr. Michael Krüger (left) and Ph.D. student Yuval Kern. (CREDIT: Technion) A quantum pulse with a split personality Ordinary intense laser light, described as coherent-state light, has only weak quantum fluctuations. …

Another automaker joins BYD with ultra-fast 1,500 kW EV chargers

Another automaker joins BYD with ultra-fast 1,500 kW EV chargers

Published by skeptic

ZeekrPower EV charge station (Source: Zeekr) BYD’s Flash Chargers can charge an electric vehicle just as fast as filling up at a gas station, but it’s not the only automaker with ultra-fast 1,500 kW EV chargers. Geely joins BYD in unlocking the 1,500 kW EV charger The era of megawatt charging is upon us, enabling EVs to charge up in under 10 minutes. BYD shook the industry last week with its Blade Battery 2.0 and Flash Charging technology. With the ability to deliver up to 1,500 kW of peak power, BYD’s new Flash Charging system can charge an electric vehicle from 10% to 70% in 5 minutes. To go from 10% to 97% takes just 9 minutes (See a video of it here). Even at temperatures as low as -30°C (-20°F), recharging only takes 12 minutes. While BYD stole the spotlight, another Chinese automaker just unlocked EV chargers with a peak power of 1,500 kW. Advertisement – scroll for more content According to China’s Autohome, Volvo owner Geely announced on its website that its self-developed …

A New Mistral AI Model’s Ultra-Fast Translation Gives Big AI Labs a Run for Their Money

A New Mistral AI Model’s Ultra-Fast Translation Gives Big AI Labs a Run for Their Money

Published by skeptic

Mistral AI has released a new family of AI models that it claims will clear the path to seamless conversation between people speaking different languages. On Wednesday, the Paris-based AI lab released two new speech-to-text models: Voxtral Mini Transcribe V2 and Voxtral Realtime. The former is built to transcribe audio files in large batches and the latter for nearly real-time transcription, within 200 milliseconds; both can translate between 13 languages. Voxtral Realtime is freely available under an open source license. At four billion parameters, the models are small enough to run locally on a phone or laptop—a first in the speech-to-text field, Mistral claims—meaning that private conversations needn’t be dispatched to the cloud. According to Mistral, the new models are both cheaper to run and less error-prone than competing alternatives. Mistral has pitched Voxtral Realtime—though the model outputs text, not speech—as a marked step towards free-flowing conversation across the language barrier, a problem Apple and Google are also competing to solve. The latest model from Google is able to translate at a two-second delay. “What …

Sales of the ultra-fast Xiaomi SU7 Ultra have ultra-plummeted

Sales of the ultra-fast Xiaomi SU7 Ultra have ultra-plummeted

Published by skeptic

The ultra-fast Xiaomi SU7 Ultra made enough headlines with its astonishing 0-60 sprints and record Nürburgring lap times to drum up around 3,000 sales per month – but the good times seem to have come to an end, and Xiaomi sold just 45 units in December. It’s hard to overestimate how much digital ink was used telling the story of Xiaomi’s world-beating, supercar-baiting SU7 Ultra hyper sedan. It was fast, looked like a better-looking version of a Porsche Taycan, and – at just 529,900 yuan (~75,000 USD) – it was relatively cheap for a 1,548 hp, 217 mph EV. The SU7 was so good, in fact, it’s rumored that Ferrari bought one to benchmark it against its own upcoming, first-ever electric car. So, what happened? Too much hype SU7 Ultra, via Xiaomi Auto/Weibo. Almost from the start, the SU7 Ultra was a victim of its own hype. After it launched with more than 1500 Plaid-pounding horsepower, early takers were disappointed to learn that the SU7 they were allowed to buy had been neutered by the safety nannies to the tune …

Scientists use ultrafast laser to flip materials into a different electronic state

Scientists use ultrafast laser to flip materials into a different electronic state

Published by Jenni Sidey

A burst of invisible light can do more than illuminate a surface. In a new study, Michigan State University researchers used an ultrafast laser to gently jolt atoms in a quantum material, then watched the surface change in real time. The shift lasted only while the laser stayed on, but it was enough to flip the material into a different electronic state, like a tiny switch you can turn on and off. The work centers on a layered material called tungsten ditelluride, shortened to WTe2. It has drawn attention for its unusual behavior at the smallest scales. Those surprising traits could matter for future devices, from smaller electronics to parts used in next-generation quantum computers. The team’s approach blended two sides of modern physics. One group built the instrument and ran the experiments. Another group used computer modeling to explain what the atoms were doing and why it changed the material’s behavior. Shear motion in WTe2 driven by tip-enhanced terahertz fields. (CREDIT: Nature Photonics) A Laser, a Needle Tip, and a Nanoscale Nudge The heart …

Astronomers watch a supermassive black hole X-ray flare ignite an ultra-fast galactic wind

Astronomers watch a supermassive black hole X-ray flare ignite an ultra-fast galactic wind

Published by Jenni Sidey

A supermassive black hole in the spiral galaxy NGC 3783 just delivered an X-ray surprise that astronomers have never watched unfold so quickly. Using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton and the JAXA-led XRISM mission, researchers saw a bright flare rise and fade, and then saw a burst of ultra-fast wind appear within about a day, racing outward at roughly 60,000 kilometers per second, near one-fifth the speed of light. “We’ve not watched a black hole create winds this speedily before,” Gu says. “For the first time, we’ve seen how a rapid burst of X-ray light from a black hole immediately triggers ultra-fast winds, with these winds forming in just a single day.” XRISM Xtend light curves from the NGC 3783 campaign. Left: soft- and hard-band light curves, shown in black and red, respectively. The light curve has been binned to multiples of the XRISM orbit (5747 s), and in this paper we count time since the start of the XRISM observation. Right: X-ray variability surrounding the main soft flare at t ∼ 2.8 × 105 s. (CREDIT: Astronomy & …