Black hole pictured for first time — in spectacular detail

Astronomers have finally glimpsed the blackness of a black hole. By stringing together a global network of radio telescopes, they have for the first time produced a picture of an event horizon — a black hole’s perilous edge — against a backdrop of swirling light. For more details see: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01155-0 Image of a black hole at the centre of the galaxy M87 obtained by the…

Renormalization group analysis of stochastic and turbulent systems

In our works we apply quantum field methods developed initially to describe interactions between elementary particles to the problems of statistical physics, namely to the fully developed hydrodynamic turbulence. The general feature of such models of statistical physics like critical behaviour and turbulence is presence of strong fluctuations, and, therefore, the presence of divergences in perturbation theory and absence of small perturbation parameter. In this…

Chirality yields colossal photocurrent

The Weyl semimetal Tantalum Arsenide has a colossal bulk photovoltaic effect – an intrinsic, or non-linear, generation of current from light more than ten times larger than ever previously achieved, according to researchers from Boston College, the University of California Los Angeles, and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Credit: Kenneth Burch/Boston College Read more here. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0297-4