Phase transitions, like water freezing into ice, are a familiar part of our world. But in quantum systems, they can behave even more dramatically, with quantum properties such as Heisenberg uncertainty playing a central role. Furthermore, various spurious effects can cause the systems to lose, or dissipate, energy to theContinue Reading
A team of researchers from Würzburg has for the first time experimentally demonstrated a quantum tornado. Electrons form vortices in the momentum space of the quantum semi-metal tantalum arsenide. Scientists have long known that electrons can form vortices in quantum materials. What’s new is the proof that these tiny particlesContinue Reading
Once described by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance,” quantum entanglement may now seem less intimidating in light of new research findings. Osaka Metropolitan University physicists have developed new, simpler formulas to quantify quantum entanglement in strongly correlated electron systems and applied them to study several nanoscale materials. TheirContinue Reading
In a new study, physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have used a cloud of atoms chilled down to incredibly cold temperatures to simultaneously measure acceleration in three dimensions — a feat that many scientists didn’t think was possible. The device, a new type of atom “interferometer,” could oneContinue Reading
A Danish-German research collaboration with participation of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) aims to develop new quantum light sources and technology for scalable quantum networks based on the rare-earth element erbium. The project EQUAL (Erbium-based silicon quantum light sources) is funded by the Innovation Fund Denmark with 40 million Danish crownsContinue Reading
Physicists at the University of Oxford have set a new global benchmark for the accuracy of controlling a single quantum bit, achieving the lowest-ever error rate for a quantum logic operation — just 0.000015%, or one error in 6.7 million operations. This record-breaking result represents nearly an order of magnitudeContinue Reading
One of the current hot research topics is the combination of two of the most recent technological breakthroughs: machine learning and quantum computing. An experimental study shows that already small-scale quantum computers can boost the performance of machine learning algorithms. This was demonstrated on a photonic quantum processor by anContinue Reading
Using advanced computational modelling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior Técnico in the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the ‘quantum vacuum’ — a state once assumed to be empty,Continue Reading
Quantum materials exhibit remarkable emergent properties when they are excited by external sources. However, these excited states decay rapidly once the excitation is removed, limiting their practical applications. A team of researchers from Harvard University and the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have now demonstrated an approach to stabilize these fleetingContinue Reading
In 2024, Empa researchers and their partners successfully for the first time realized a so-called one-dimensional alternating Heisenberg model with a synthetic material. This theoretical quantum-physical model, known for nearly a century, describes a linear chain of spins — a type of quantum magnetism. Now, the researchers led by RomanContinue Reading
