An international research team, including researchers from the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, has for the first time combined data from heavy-ion experiments, gravitational wave measurements and other astronomical observations using advanced theoretical modelling to more precisely constrain the properties of nuclear matter as it can be found in the interior of neutron stars. The results were published in the journal “Nature”.

A research team was able to generate polarized X-rays with unprecedented purity at the European XFEL in Hamburg. The experiments involved scientists from the Helmholtz Institute Jena, a branch of GSI, Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf. The method is supposed to be used in the coming years to show that even vacuum behaves like a material under certain circumstances — a prediction from quantum electrodynamics.