News from FZU

Dear colleagues,we would like to invite you to the seminar of Division of Elementary Particle Physics of Institute of Physics, presented by Bharat Ratra.For more info, please see invitation.

A team of physicists of the Czech Academy of Scienceshas unveiled a novel battery electrolyte that could to reshape the future of energy storage—enhancing stability, simplifying production, and extending battery lifespan.

How many nanometres does your hand measure? Why does nothing stand still in the nano- world? And what does atomic force microscopy allow us to do? This and more is revealed in the new comic book Secrets of the Nano- World, published by the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The comic book introduces the frequently mentioned, but rarely taught topic of nanotechnology to (not only) students and teachers.

Open Access means permanent, free and immediate online access to documents for all users. It brings faster sharing of knowledge and the latest findings to the general public, as well as streamlining scholarly communication. For scientists, Open Access can mean higher citation rates for scientific publications and, in turn, increased visibility of 

The program is composed of four sessions. Each session starts with a lecture and continues with practical exercises. For practical exercises, the users will be provided with a cookbook, installation files and necessary data. Installation of all necessary software will be done at the beginning of the workshop. Please let us know in advance if you cannot come with a notebook.For this workshop, a preliminary experience with Jana2006/Jana2020 is required. The workshop is OFF LINE.

Everyday things have interesting aspects if we choose to explore them a little. Crystallography studies substances in the solid state. When a chicken egg is considered, only the shell is solid. That's what we decided to analyse using X-ray diffraction.

Without adequate methods, science is essentially blind. Why, then, is it so hard to secure funding for pure method development? Daniel Tchoń from the Institute of Physics of the CAS shares his journey towards scientific software development and why he views science as a form of art.

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to CERN collaborations during a ceremony on 5 April in Los Angeles.  The prize goes to the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb collaborations, which bring together scientists from more than 70 countries. 

The first observation of baryonic matter and antimatter behaving differently was presented on Monday by an international team of physicists from CERN. The result announced at the Rencontres de Moriond conference marks a milestone in the history of particle physics. This fundamental discovery expands our understanding of the differences between matter and antimatter and opens up new ways for scientists to understand why at the origin of the universe it was matter that won.

The Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences organizes the Physics Photography 2025 competition, which this year is thematically dedicated to "wealth".  The main goal of the competition is to popularize the beauty of physics and to break the stereotypes of the perception of this field of science. The photography competition ends with the announcement of winners and an exhibition of the awarded and selected photos during the Night of Scientists, which is organized by the institute in the Na Slovance facility on Friday, September 26, 2025.

Dear colleagues,we would like to invite you to the seminar of Division of Elementary Particle Physics of Institute of Physics, presented by Adrian Oeftinger.For more info, please see invitation.

Scientists led by Hana Lísalová from the Division of Optics have made a significant step towards a breakthrough in the field of optical fibre sensors. For the first time, they have succeeded in combining two advanced technologies – antifouling polymer brushes and optical fibres, thereby significantly increasing their reliability. This innovative approach paves the way for accurate detection of biomolecules even in challenging environments such as blood plasma.

The PRO-EURO-DILI-NET consortium, which also included the Laboratory of Biophysics team from the Division of Optics, was evaluated as the best project within the COST Action programme. The international research project focused on the issue of drug-induced liver injury (DILI), which represents one of the main challenges in the development of new drugs. The project now continues as part of the European Association for the Study of Liver (EASL) within the Horizon Europe program.  COST Actions are international research networks funded for four years, which bring together scientists across borders, disciplines and sectors to solve common challenges and advance scientific knowledge and innovation in Europe.  

Abstract: Theoretical prediction for the distribution of the angle between electrons and positrons originating in internal pair creations is a monotonic featureless decrease with the opening angle. Studies on excited states of 8Be and 4He nuclei, made in ATOMKI, Hungary, over the last decade, revealed deviations from this expectation. If true, the anomaly can be explained by introducing a new short-lived neutral boson that can still fit into known experimental and theoretical constraints. Although several independent laboratories have been trying to verify these results world wide, a satisfactory model does not exist yet.In this seminar I will give an overview of a selection of different experiments aiming at the solution of the ATOMKI anomaly and summarise their results. I will also describe the ongoing construction of a spectrometer for light charged particles at the Van-de-Graaff accelerator facility of the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics (IEAP) at the Czech Technical University in Prague in order to either confirm or disprove the above-mentioned anomaly.