When spin and sound coexist: Physicists at RPTU generate hybrid spin-sound waves
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 22-Dec-2025 16:12 ET (22-Dec-2025 21:12 GMT/UTC)
Acoustic frequency filters, which convert electrical signals into miniaturized sound waves, separate the different frequency bands for mobile communications, Wi-Fi, and GPS in smartphones. Physicists at RPTU have now shown that such miniaturized sound waves can couple strongly with spin waves in yttrium iron garnet. This results in novel hybrid spin-sound waves in the gigahertz frequency range. The use of such nanoscale hybrid spin-sound waves provides a pathway for agile frequency filters for the upcoming 6G mobile communications generation. The fundamental study by the RPTU researchers has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
The IPCC has developed the Global Warming Potential metric, a unit that compares a specific gas’s contribution to climate change to that of carbon dioxide. Nitrogen trifluoride is particularly bad, with a GWP about 17,000 times higher than carbon dioxide. But NF3 is critical in the semiconductor industry for etching and cleaning, and its use has increased more than twentyfold over the past 30 years. In the JVST:B, researchers develop a machine learning framework to predict the GWP of potential alternative materials.
Physicists from Swansea University have played the leading role in a scientific breakthrough at CERN, developing an innovative technique that increases the antihydrogen trapping rate by a factor of ten.
Postmenopausal osteoporosis is a condition that weakens bones, making them brittle and prone to fracture. Taking the hormone estradiol can reverse these effects, but it may also increase endometrial and uterine cancer risks. Researchers publishing in ACS’ Nano Letters developed a two-layer shell to encapsulate the hormone so it bypasses the uterus and releases only within an osteoporotic bone. Tests of the drug-delivery system showed improved bone density in treated mice without uterine side effects.
Bowhead whales likely reproduce beneath the sea ice northwest of Spitsbergen, while using the open water in the eastern Fram Strait as a migration corridor. This conclusion comes from researchers in the Ocean Acoustics Group at the Alfred Wegener Institute, who recorded the calls of bowhead whales using underwater recorders and analysed the records with artificial intelligence. Their study on bowhead whale habitat use in relation to sea-ice cover has now been published in the journal Scientific Reports.