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Category: quantum physics – Page 6

Now you see it, now you don’t: Material can transition between quantum states

A team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has identified a rare, switchable quantum property in a new type of nickel sulfide material. The discovery could have applications in high-speed transistors, adaptive sensors and other devices that require a material’s electronic structure to be controlled on the fly. The research is published in the journal Matter.

The compound, KxNi4S2 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1), contains nickel and sulfur sandwiched between layers of potassium. The “(0 ≤ x ≤ 1)” in the name means that the amount of potassium in the material can vary from no potassium at all to a full potassium atom, depending on the sample.

First detailed in a 2021 paper, it was created as part of an ongoing quest to develop more superconductors. As researchers examined the layered material’s characteristics, they happened upon a remarkable feature: applying an electrical current could drive the potassium layers out, collapsing the sandwich and changing the material’s structure.

Dancing to invisible choreography, quantum computers can balance the noise

Large-scale quantum computers are waiting in the wings. One of the main reasons we don’t have them yet is because quantum hardware is so noisy. This isn’t the type of noise you’d want to shush in a crowded theater. When it comes to computers, noise means errors that crop up when conditions aren’t perfect.

“We need to find a way to detect errors and correct for them,” said graduate student Evangelos Piliouras. Working with physicist Ed Barnes, Piliouras devised a method to reduce the noise and make quantum computers more noise tolerant. His work was published in npj Quantum Information.

Noise can have real-world implications even in a traditional computer, which uses a stream of electrical signals called bits that represent the 1s and 0s that make up binary code. Noise can knock a 0 into a 1, and a credit card transaction, for instance, might fail.

Teleportation is no longer just science fiction—at the quantum level

(Science fiction’s “warp drive” is speeding closer to reality.)

Inspired by science fiction, they landed on “quantum teleportation.” Since then, the idea has gone from theoretical concept to an experimentally verified reality. The first experiments in the late 1990s showed that quantum states could be transmitted across short distances, while subsequent research proved it works across increasingly longer distances—even to and from low Earth orbit, as Chinese scientists demonstrated in 2017. They’ve achieved quantum teleportation by taking advantage of quantum entanglement, a natural phenomenon in which tiny particles can become linked with each other across infinite distances.

Quantum teleportation is very different from the teleportation of matter we see in fiction. It involves transferring a quantum state without moving any matter. And while experts say it won’t lead to Star Trek-esque beaming, it could help bring about a new era of computing that revolutionizes our understanding of the subatomic world—and by extension, of the nature of the universe and everything within it.

Physicists just turned glass into a powerful quantum security device

Scientists have turned simple glass into a powerful quantum communication device that could safeguard data against future quantum attacks. The chip combines stability, speed, and versatility—handling both ultra-secure encryption and record-breaking random number generation in one compact system.

Is Spacetime Fundamental, or is it Emergent? With Brian Cox

In this conversation, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice are joined by physicist Brian Cox to explore one of the deepest open questions in modern physics: whether space and time are fundamental—or emergent.

The discussion spans emergent spacetime, quantum entanglement, black holes, wormholes, and the black hole information paradox, including ideas like ER = EPR, causality protection, and whether information is ever truly destroyed. The core idea centers on the possibility that spacetime itself emerges from deeper quantum information structures, challenging our intuitive understanding of reality.

From ‘Are We The Universe’s Way of Knowing Itself? With Brian Cox’: • Are We The Universe’s Way of Knowing Itsel…

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Corralling Interfering Anyons

Link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/Physics.19.

A delicate interference experiment elucidates the collective behavior of quasiparticles that are neither bosons nor fermions, but something in between.

When you live in theory-land, as I do, anyons in fractional quantum Hall (FQH) systems are an emblem of elegance. They address a fundamental question in quantum mechanics—the classification of indistinguishable particles—by breaking the long-rooted dichotomy between fermions and bosons and replacing it with a continuum of possibilities. Their implications are far reaching. Anyons account for the “hierarchy” of FQH states and they inspire visions of topologically protected quantum computation [1]. In experiment-land, the most direct manifestation of anyons is the phase that the system’s wave function acquires when two anyons are interchanged or when one winds around another. This phase is at the heart of a new experiment performed by Noah Samuelson and Andrea Young of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and their collaborators [2].

Electric current stabilizes spins at unstable points for new types of computing

A research team has discovered a new way to control tiny magnetic properties inside materials using electric current, which could possibly pave the way for new types of computing technologies. The work is based on spintronics, a field that uses not only the electric charge of electrons but also their “spin,” a quantum property that can be thought of as a tiny magnet.

Spintronics is already used in magnetic random access memory (MRAM), a type of memory that keeps data even when the power is turned off. This is different from conventional memory, which loses information without electricity.

In MRAM, data is stored depending on whether spins point “up” or “down.” These two stable states are separated by an energy barrier, which helps keep the data secure. However, this stability also makes it harder to switch between states, requiring strong electric currents.

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