In research published in Nature, an international research group has ended a fifty-year quest by directly observing a quantum phenomenon known as a Kondo screening cloud. This phenomenon, which is important for many physical phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity, is essentially a cloud that masks magnetic impurities in a material. It was known to exist but its spatial extension had never been experimentally observed, creating controversy over whether such an extension actually existed.

Read more at Nature: 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2058-6 

The paper has also featured in CityU Research:
https://www.cityu.edu.hk/research/stories/2020/03/12/worlds-first-experimental-observation-kondo-cloud

Optical micro-combs are tiny optical structures that convert a single laser into many different wavelengths of light. These devices have been used in a wide range of exciting demonstrations, including optical communications. The key to micro-combs are optical resonator structures, tiny rings (see picture) that when hit with enough light convert the incoming single wavelength into a precise rainbow of wavelengths. This work uses a novel kind of micro-comb called a “solition crystal”, that produces 80 separate wavelengths of light that can carry different signals at the same time. To prove the micro-comb could be used in a real-world environment, we transmitted the data through installed optical fibres in Melbourne (provided by AARNet) between RMIT’s City campus and Monash’s Clayton campus and back, for a round trip of 75 kilometres and demonstrated data transmission at > 40 Tbps. A world record in terms of spectral efficiency on a standard optical fiber.

Read more at Nature Communications:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16265-x

Please click the following links for media coverage: 

1. Australia 'records fastest internet speed ever' [BBC News] 2020-05-22 Technology
2. 'Fastest ever' internet speed capable of downloading 1,000 HD movies in under a second is recorded in Australia - and it is four million times faster than the country's average connection [Daily Mail] 2020-05-22 Science & Tech
3. Internet traffic is growing 25% each year. We created a fingernail-sized chip that can help the NBN keep up [The Conversation] 2020-05-22 Science & Technology
4. World's fastest internet speed from a single optical chip [Science Daily] 2020-05-22 Science News
5. Un record de débit Internet atteint par des scientifiques australiens [Radio-Canada] 2020-05-23 Techno