A Southampton physicist’s video using cartoon cats to explain quantum mechanics is in the running to win an international short film festival.

Approaching Reality, a three-minute short created by the University of Southampton’s Dr Simone De Liberato, is one of ten finalists for the Quantum Shorts 2016 festival.

The video uses colourful cats, a one-eyed observer reminiscent of Cyclops, and musical crescendo to explain the scientific concept of linear superposition to the public.

Dr De Liberato, leader of the department of Physics and Astronomy’s Quantum Theory and Technology Group, has been shortlisted for Quantum Shorts from over 200 submissions from 51 countries. His video is now in contention for three top prizes, including a publicly-chosen People’s Choice Award that is voted for through the film festival’s website.

Dr De Liberato says: “The quantum world is a strange place in which single systems can co-exist in multiple states at the same time, like the famous Schrödinger cat. I struggled to find a vivid visual code to convey this concept, due to our tendency to focus visual attention on one object at a time. Fortunately, this isn’t the case when it comes to listening. Our hearing allows us to consider different sounds both individually, or in combination. Like focusing on a single violin within the orchestra, or listening to the entire ensemble. The next step was to approach a composer to create a piece of music based on the rules of quantum mechanics, which in turn, led to the production of this video. I’m really pleased it’s become such an effective public engagement tool.â€?

“It’s fantastic that the shortlisting panel for Quantum Shorts has highlighted Approaching Reality from such an extensive list of entries and I look forward to hearing the judges’ final outcome soon. I hope this project and the positive coverage it’s receiving can inspire more people to explore the rich world of theoretical physics.â€?

The Approaching Reality project has benefited from a Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence grant that incorporated musician Martin Fogel and a University of Southampton outreach grant that helped hire two animators.

The video will be shown alongside other shortlisted titles at the Art Science Museum in Singapore, the Glasgow Science Centre in Scotland, the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia, and Science World in Vancouver, Canada, as part of special Quantum Shorts screenings in the coming weeks.

More information on the Approaching Reality project is available at approachingreality.org, while the video’s Quantum Shorts entry – including the online voting poll – can be found at http://shorts2016.quantumlah.org/films.

The Institute of Physics (IoP) has awarded Juno Practitioner status to the University of Southampton’s department of Physics and Astronomy. The accolade underlines the department’s good practice in equality and diversity, and follows the presentation of an Athena SWAN Bronze Award.

Professor Jonathan Flynn, Head of Department for Physics and Astronomy, says: “We believe strongly in providing equal opportunities for all staff and students and are delighted that our efforts have received recognition from the IoP. Physics thrives on new ways of thinking and including people from the most diverse backgrounds can drive this, building a welcoming, vibrant and exciting community where everyone can contribute. We look forward to welcoming the IoP Diversity Team to the department in the near future as we work towards Champion status.â€?

The Juno assessment panel identified some particular good practice: dedicated funding for women to attend events and support of the department's Women’s Physics Network; an annual staff survey analysed by the departmental equality and diversity committee; a transparent workload model; a reduced teaching load for those returning from maternity/paternity leave, and actions to encourage female applicants to apply for vacancies.

Physics and Astronomy has held an Athena SWAN Bronze Award since 2014 and is working towards Athena SWAN Silver and Juno Champion status.

The University also holds an Athena SWAN Silver Award and will be running its first Diversity Fortnight from Monday 20 February to Tuesday 7 March. For more information, visit the Diversity section of the University website.

Senior Researcher Andy O’Bannon has been selected as an Outstanding Referee for exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in Physical Review journals.

Dr Andy O’Bannon, a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the University of Southampton’s department of Physics and Astronomy, is one of only 13 UK-based academics to be selected by the American Physical Society (APS) for 2017 as an Outstanding Referee for Physical Review journals.

Recognition in the Outstanding Referee programme is a lifetime honour, with 150 researchers named from 29 countries across the globe in 2017.

Dr O’Bannon says: "I am deeply honoured and humbled to be selected by the APS as an Outstanding Referee. I take refereeing very seriously, given that peer review is a central pillar of modern science, and indeed is one of the few concrete things we can point to that separates science from pseudo-science.

“The best refereeing should be sceptical and adversarial, but also fair and honest. The real goal is excellent science. The APS deserves credit for recognising referees’ efforts to maintain good scientific practice and uphold core scientific values."

Dr O’Bannon has been contributing to the Southampton Theory Astrophysics and Gravity (STAG) Research Centre since 2015, following research positions in Seattle and Munich as well as at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A leading expert in holography, his research is focused on strongly-interacting systems with unusual transport properties.

Professor Jonathan Flynn, Head of Department for Physics and Astronomy, adds: “It is fantastic to see Andy congratulated for his outstanding service to the physics community. His efforts not only maintain journal standards, but also help authors improve the quality and readability of their articles. He is an excellent ambassador for the University and richly deserves this recognition.â€?

The American Physical Society is a non-profit membership organisation working to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through research journals, scientific meetings and international activities. Its Physical Review collection includes some of the most cited physics journals in the world.

This year’s selection in the Outstanding Referee programme was made from 30 years of records on over 57,000 referees who have been called upon to review manuscripts, including more than 35,000 that were submitted in 2016.

A €1 million European project, driven by outreach expertise from the University of Southampton, has reached close to half a million people with the science of light.

The Photonics4All project delivered 230 events for European audiences across a two-year period and produced an extensive toolkit of outreach resources that have now been made available for general use.

The programme, which was funded by the European Union to promote photonics and light-based technologies, brought together partners from nine EU countries to inspire young people, entrepreneurs and the general public with the growing potential of the scientific study.

Academics, postgraduate students and members of the Optics and Photonics Society from across the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre and department of Physics and Astronomy played a major part in the success of the EU project.

Public Engagement Leader Pearl John, a UK Project Partner, said: “Photonics plays a crucial role in many global industries so it is essential we relay its importance to the next generation of scientists and engineers. It has been very exciting to work on the many innovative hands-on activities, workshops and start-up challenges that have been generated through Photonics4All and I would encourage others to replicate its success with the free tools that are available online.â€?

Photonics4All ran until December 2016, using 11 distinct types of activities to reach its different target groups. Outreach tools developed during its operation include an Android photonics app, animated video, brochures, games, best practice handbooks and an OmniLight Laboratory for live photonics experiments and demonstrations.

Children’s Universities, led by the University of Southampton, reached young people in Great Britain, Germany, Austria and Sweden and introduced classes to the topic with experiments and educational games from resources including a Photonics Explorer Kit.

Entrepreneurs were also engaged in the programme through boot camps, innovation workshops and a European Start-up Challenge, in which business models of candidate start-ups were evaluated by a jury of photonics and business experts before a final event where entrants could pitch their idea to a wider professional audience. Specific Invest Events then matched upcoming photonics companies with private investors.

Photonics campaigns were used to increase awareness of the topic with the general public in Britain, France, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden and Slovakia. The project targeted existing events such as science and light festivals while also organising special events with interactive exhibitions, city lighting, displays, light shows and marketing giveaways. Highlights included a laser installation created by the OmniLight Laboratory for the 2016 Festival of Light in Bratislava, Slovakia, and a ‘Photonics Science Slam’ in Germany.

Photonics4All received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. Most of the outreach tools are accessible through the Photonics4All website and replicable for free.

For further information please contact Pearl John: pj@soton.ac.uk.

A UK, Canadian and Italian study has provided what researchers believe is the first observational evidence that our universe could be a vast and complex hologram.

Theoretical physicists and astrophysicists, investigating irregularities in the cosmic microwave background (the ‘afterglow’ of the Big Bang), have found there is substantial evidence supporting a holographic explanation of the universe – in fact, as much as there is for the traditional explanation of these irregularities using the theory of cosmic inflation.

The researchers, from the University of Southampton (UK), University of Waterloo (Canada), Perimeter Institute (Canada), INFN, Lecce (Italy) and the University of Salento (Italy), have published findings in the journal Physical Review Letters.

A holographic universe, an idea first suggested in the 1990s, is one where all the information, which makes up our 3D ‘reality’ (plus time) is contained in a 2D surface on its boundaries.

Professor Kostas Skenderis, Director of the Southampton Theory Astrophysics and Gravity (STAG) Research Centre at the University of Southampton explains: “Imagine that everything you see, feel and hear in three dimensions (and your perception of time) in fact emanates from a flat two-dimensional field. The idea is similar to that of ordinary holograms where a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface, such as in the hologram on a credit card. However, this time, the entire universe is encoded!â€?

Although not an example with holographic properties, it could be thought of as rather like watching a 3D film in a cinema. We see the pictures as having height, width and crucially, depth – when in fact it all originates from a flat 2D screen. The difference, in our 3D universe, is that we can touch objects and the ‘projection’ is ‘real’ from our perspective. In recent decades, advances in telescopes and sensing equipment have allowed scientists to detect a vast amount of data hidden in the ‘white noise’ or microwaves (partly responsible for the random black and white dots you see on an un-tuned TV) left over from the moment the universe was created. Using this information, the team were able to make complex comparisons between networks of features in the data and quantum field theory. They found that some of the simplest quantum field theories could explain nearly all cosmological observations of the early universe.

Professor Skenderis comments: “Holography is a huge leap forward in the way we think about the structure and creation of the universe. Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains almost everything large scale in the universe very well, but starts to unravel when examining its origins and mechanisms at quantum level. Scientists have been working for decades to combine Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum theory. Some believe the concept of a holographic universe has the potential to reconcile the two. I hope our research takes us another step towards this.â€?

The scientists now hope their study will open the door to further our understanding of the early universe and explain how space and time emerged.