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The STEREO experiment releases new results based on the detection of about 65 000 neutrinos at short distance from the research reactor of the ILL.

A high-precision experiment led by Vienna's Technical University (TU Vienna) has set its sights on pinpointing the so-far hypothetical "symmetron fields" using the PF2 ultra-cold neutron source at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in France. The existence of symmetrons could provide an explanation …

E=mc2 : Michael Jentschel and Klaus Blaum explain why the most famous equation of physics needs checking — and how to do it. A Nature Physics publication.

Even as we are going to celebrate 80 years since the discovery of nuclear fission, there remain significant gaps in our understanding of the nuclear fission process – which impacts on the success of modelling the fission reaction and its applications. Despite tremendous effort, aspects of nuclear fission are still open to inquiry.Nuclear reactors have already been in successful operation for 75 y…

Neutrinos are notoriously hard-to-detect elementary particles. They are produced in the core of stars, at particle accelerators, in very high energy phenomena or – as in STEREO – in nuclear reactor cores. Neutrinos do not carry any electric charge and only rarely do they interact with matter. Nowadays, we know of three types: electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos. The 20-year old a…

9 September 2016An experiment measuring gamma rays from the nucleus 133Sb provides new insights into the fundamental coupling between collective and single-particle structures in exotic nuclei.Nuclear reactions are among the most important processes that drive our Universe. In our Sun nuclear fusion provides the energy for the sun to radiate. In more violent cosmic events neutron capture reaction…

The Cheshire cat. © darren whittingham, fotolia.com 29.07.2014First experimental observation of a 'Quantum Cheshire Cat‘ could help to perform high precision measurements of quantum systems. Researchers from the Vienna University of Technology have performed the fi…

It does not always take a huge accelerator to do particle physics.First results from a low-energy, table-top alternative experiment broaden the scope of validity of Newton's gravitational theory and define more narrowly - by more than a hundred thousand times - the potential properties of the forc…