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Four of the nation’s top scientists have each been awarded $1 million in direct funding via the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows program.  

Converting dinitrogen into ammonia is critical for making fertilizer. Conventional conversion processes use adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Researchers are now working on processes that instead use sunlight, which reduces energy use and greenhouse gas production relative to the ATP process. In this research, scientists created a unique biohybrid that couples nanocrystals to nitrogen-catalyzing enzymes to produce ammonia using sunlight.

The collision of neutron stars creates an enigmatic object called a remnant. These remnants can, but don’t always, collapse into a black hole. This research used supercomputer simulations to examine the internal structure of these remnants and their cooling process, primarily through neutrino emissions, and what that means for black hole formation.

Neutrinos can change their identities or “flavors” when they interact. Researchers recently found that the neutrinos in a very dense environment such as a core collapse supernova can develop strong correlations through mutual interactions. This means that over time, neutrinos with different initial flavors reach a similar equilibrium flavor and energy distribution.

Plants are powerful factories – they can turn basic ingredients like carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight into oxygen, sugars, and plant mass. But plants don’t do all of this work on their own. Below the soil’s surface, plant roots work with tiny microbes to gain access to the nutrients they need to survive. This microbial ecosystem, known as the plant microbiome, has the power to make or break a plant’s success aboveground. 

Fuel density in fusion tokamak devices has historically been constrained by limits in device design. Now, however, researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have for the first time gone beyond these density limits while simultaneously maintaining high confinement quality. These conditions have in the past been mutually exclusive. The result points to a possible solution for a common challenge for tokamak devices.

In cuprate materials, superconductivity competes with magnetic spin and electric charge density wave (CDW) order in the material’s electrons. In some of these materials, strong magnetic interaction causes spin density waves (SDW) and CDWs to lock together to form a stable long-range “stripe state” where the peaks and valleys of the two waves are aligned. This stripe state competes with and interrupts the superconducting phase, but the new research found that short-range CDW can be compatible with superconductivity.

Yuan Ping developed a suite of measurement methods and produced data that scientists used to benchmark energy transport models. These models increase scientists’ control of fusion energy losses. The research team improved the efficiency of the energy conversion from the lasers to the final hot fuel.