A new method for shaping matter into complex shapes, with the use of 'twisted' light, has been demonstrated in research at the University of Strathclyde.
In Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity arises when a massive object distorts the fabric of spacetime the way a ball sinks into a piece of stretched cloth. Solving Einstein's equations by using quantities that apply across...
On August 12, the hybrid magnet of the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) in Hefei, China, produced a steady field of 45.22 tesla (T), the highest steady magnetic field by a working magnet in the world.
Topology and entanglement are two powerful principles for characterizing the structure of complex quantum states. In a new paper in the journal Physical Review X, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania establish a relationship...
From water boiling into steam to ice cubes melting in a glass, we've all seen the phenomenon known as a phase transition in our everyday lives. But there's another type of phase transition that's much harder to see, but just as stark:...
Physicists love to smash particles together and study the resulting chaos. Therein lies the discovery of new particles and strange physics, generated for tiny fractions of a second and recreating conditions often not seen in our universe...
Researchers have used the coldest systems in the universe to realize in the laboratory gauge theories, key models of modern physics that describe the fundamental forces of Nature and the behavior of complex quantum materials.
Our modern understanding of the physical world is based on gauge theories: mathematical models from theoretical physics that describe the interactions between elementary particles (such as electrons or quarks) and explain quantum...
An international collaboration of scientists has created and observed an entirely new class of vortices -- the whirling masses of fluid or air. A new article details laboratory studies of these 'exotic' whirlpools in an ultracold gas of...
In 1975, three CERN theorists, John Ellis, Mary K. Gaillard and Dimitri Nanopoulos, undertook the first comprehensive study of the collider phenomenology of the Higgs boson. Almost 40 years later, it was discovered at the LHC. Now, ten...
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Harvard University and Stanford University have recently unveiled the existence of unique helical spin states in Heisenberg quantum...
Combining artificial intelligence and quantum mechanics, researchers have simulated what happens at the molecular level when water freezes. The result is the most complete yet simulation of the first steps in ice 'nucleation,' a process...
A research group led by graduate student Yeelai Chew, Assistant Professor Sylvain de Léséleuc and Professor Kenji Ohmori at the Institute for Molecular Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, is using atoms cooled to almost...
A team of researchers at Quantinuum, working with a colleague at the University of Texas, Austin, has developed a way to simulate infinitely many chaotic particles using a quantum computer running with a limited number of qubits. In...
Researchers have demonstrated how a smart compiler specifically tailored for superconducting quantum hardware can optimize circuits and networks and execute less error-prone quantum algorithms such as Quantum Approximate Optimization...
The LHCb experiment at CERN recently announced the first proton-proton collisions at a world-record energy with its brand-new detector designed to cope with much more demanding data-taking conditions.
Tiny crystals, known as quantum dots, have enabled an international team to achieve a quantum efficiency exceeding 100 percent in the photocurrent generated in a hybrid inorganic-organic semiconductor.
A research partnership at the Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Chicago-based Super.tech (acquired by ColdQuanta in May 2022) demonstrated how to optimize the execution of the ZZ...
Researchers have designed smart, color-controllable white light devices from quantum dots -- tiny semiconductors just a few billionths of a meter in size -- which are more efficient and have better color saturation than standard LEDs,...
Much ado was made about the Higgs boson when this elusive particle was discovered in 2012. Though it was touted as giving ordinary matter mass, interactions with the Higgs field only generate about 1 percent of ordinary mass. The other...
Quantum computing, though still in its early days, has the potential to dramatically increase processing power by harnessing the strange behavior of particles at the smallest scales. Some research groups have already reported performing...
Superconductors, materials that can conduct electricity with no resistance at low temperatures, have many interesting and advantageous properties. In recent years, physicists and computer scientists have been investigating their...
Atoms are notoriously difficult to control. They zigzag like fireflies, tunnel out of the strongest containers and jitter even at temperatures near absolute zero.
Scientists embedded elementary particles called muons into a many-layered nickel oxide superconductor to learn more about its magnetic properties. They discovered that waves of flip-flopping electron spins create magnetic excitations...
One of the cornerstones of the implementation of quantum technology is the creation and manipulation of the shape of external fields that can optimize the performance of quantum devices. Known as quantum optimal control, this set of...
Until 2018, the SI unit of mass, the kilogram, was defined as the mass of a real object: the International Prototype Kilogram, kept in a secure facility in the outskirts of Paris. On November 16, 2018, the kilogram was given a new,...
Quantum devices are a promising technological advance for the future, but this will hinge on the application of quantum optimal control top real-world devices. A new review looks at the status of the field as it stands.
A very special bonding state between atoms has been created in the laboratory: With a laser beam, atoms can be polarized so that they are positively charged on one side and negatively charged on the other. This makes them attract each...
A special bonding state between atoms has been created in the laboratory for the first time: With a laser beam, atoms can be polarized so that they are positively charged on one side and negatively charged on the other. This makes them...
Researchers have identified highly ionized species of the famous soccer ball-shaped 'Buckminsterfullerene' C60 molecule as plausible carriers of at least some of the most prominent and enigmatic Unidentified Infrared Emission (UIE) bands...
Yet-to-be discovered axions and axion-like particles may be the key to explaining some of the deepest puzzles of our universe, such as dark matter and charge-parity violation in strong interactions. Several recent theories have predicted...
Quantum computing, a field that relies on the principles of quantum mechanics to calculate outcomes, has the potential to perform tasks too complex for traditional computers and to do so at high speeds, making it in some ways the new...
An expression for the maximum speed at which changes in macroscopic systems can occur has been derived by a theoretical physicist at RIKEN. This will deepen our understanding of quantum phenomena in systems that are not in equilibrium.
When a highly diluted gas is cooled to extremely low temperatures, bizarre properties are revealed. Thus, some gases form a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate—a type of matter in which all atoms move in unison. Another example is...
Scientists have used neutron scattering to determine whether a specific material's atomic structure could host a novel state of matter called a spiral spin liquid. By tracking tiny magnetic moments known as 'spins' on the honeycomb...
Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering to determine whether a specific material's atomic structure could host a novel state of matter called a spiral spin liquid. By tracking tiny magnetic moments known...
A method known as quantum key distribution has long held the promise of communication security unattainable in conventional cryptography. An international team of scientists has now demonstrated experimentally, for the first time, an...
An international team has successfully implemented an advanced form of quantum cryptography for the first time. Moreover, encryption is independent of the quantum device used and therefore even more secure against hacking attempts.
Physicists are claiming significant progress in using quantum computers to study and predict how the state of a large number of interacting quantum particles evolves over time. This was done by developing a quantum algorithm that they...
Researchers discover that nickel oxide superconductors contain a phase of quantum matter, known as charge density waves, that's common in other unconventional superconductors. In other ways, though, they're surprisingly unique....
Quantum clocks are shrinking, thanks to new technologies. A team of quantum physicists have devised new approaches that not only reduce the size of their clock, but also make it robust enough to be transported out of the laboratory and...
About three years ago, a team of astronomers went looking for the universe's missing mass, better known as dark matter, in the heart of an atom. Their expedition didn't lead them to dark matter, but they still found something that had...
Researchers have come up with a novel way to study the thermodynamic properties of molten salts, which are used in many nuclear and solar energy applications.
For decades computers have been synonymous with binary information -- zeros and ones. Now a team has realized a quantum computer that breaks out of this paradigm and unlocks additional computational resources, hidden in almost all of...
Supercomputer simulations are helping scientists discover new high-entropy alloys. XSEDE allocations on TACC's Stampede2 supercomputer supported density function theory calculations for largest database yet of high-entropy alloy...