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JQI physicists, led by Trey Porto, are interested in quantum magnetic ordering, which is believed to be intimately related to high-temperature superconductivity and also has significance in other massively connected quantum systems. Recently, the group studied the magnetic and motional dynamics of atoms in a specially designed laser-based lattice that looks like a checkerboard. Their work was published in the journal Science.

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Recently physicists led JQI Fellow Christopher Monroe have executed an MRI-like diagnostic on a crystal of interacting quantum spins. They predict that their method is scalable and may be useful for validating experiments with large ensembles of interacting spins.

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Physicists are pretty adept at controlling quantum systems and even making certain entangled states. JQI researchers are putting these skills to work to explore the dynamics of correlated quantum systems. Their recent results investigating how information flows through a quantum many-body system are published this week in the journal Nature (10.1038/nature13450), and in a second paper to appear in Physical Review Letters.

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Physicists have now proposed a modular quantum computer architecture that promises scalability to much larger numbers of qubits. The components of this architecture have individually been tested and are available, making it a promising approach.

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Atomtronics is an emerging technology whereby physicists use ensembles of atoms to build analogs to electronic circuit elements. Using lasers and magnetic fields, atomic systems can be engineered to have behavior analogous to that of electrons, making them an exciting platform for studying and generating alternatives to charge-based electronics. Using a superfluid atomtronic circuit, JQI physicists, led by Gretchen Campbell, have demonstrated a tool that is critical to electronics: hysteresis. This is the first time that hysteresis has been observed in an ultracold atomic gas. This research is published in the February 13 issue of Nature magazine, whose cover features an artistic impression of the atomtronic system.

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Can scientists generate any color of light? The answer is not really, but the invention of the laser in 1960 opened new doors for this endeavor. In a result published in Nature Communications scientists demonstrate a new semiconductor microstructure that performs frequency conversion. This design is a factor of 1000 smaller than previous devices.

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In this week’s issue of Nature Photonics scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute (*) report the first observation of topological effects for light in two dimensions, analogous to the quantum Hall effect for electrons. To accomplish this, they built a structure to guide infrared light over the surface of a room temperature, silicon-on-insulator chip.

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This week’s issue of Science Magazine features new results from the research group of Christopher Monroe at the JQI, where they explored how to frustrate a quantum magnet comprised of sixteen atomic ions – to date the largest ensemble of qubits to perform a simulation of quantum matter.

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JQI scientists, led by Professor Edo Waks, have performed an ultrafast logic gate on a photon, using a semiconductor quantum dot.

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Experimentalists have recently confirmed that SmB6 is the first true 3D topological insulator—as originally predicted by JQI/CMTC☨ theorists in 2010.

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An optical diode made with silicon technology can be used for quantum information. Researchers from JQI and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) propose using ring resonators to construct a micro-optical diode. The technology is silicon-on-insulator, making it compatible with the CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) fabrication processes underlying today’s computer circuits.

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Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute* have shown that an optical lattice system exhibits a never-before-seen quantum state called a topological semimetal. The semimetal, which debuts in the Advance Online Publication for the journal Nature Physics (DOI:10.1038/NPHYS2134}, can undergo a new type of phase transition to a topological insulator.

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Scientists are proposing a novel method for forcing photons to act like electrons. Two researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI)*, Mohammad Hafezi and Jacob M. Taylor, and two researchers at Harvard, Eugene A. Demler and Mikhail D. Lukin, propose an optical delay line that could fit onto a computer chip. Kilometers of glass fiber are easily obtained, but fabricating optical elements that can fit on a single chip creates defects that can lead to reduced transmission of information.

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A new study proves that a much-sought exotic quantum state of matter can exist. Researchers uncover the existence of a spin liquid in a frustrated system.

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Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) researchers have observed the onset of a quantum phase transition to a quantum ferromagnet using a nine ion crystal, in an atom-by-atom approach to quantum simulations of magnetism.

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JQI Fellows Edo Waks of the University of Maryland (UMD) and Ian Spielman of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are among 85 scientists and engineers nationally to receive this year's Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

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Nobel laureate Walter Kohn, who invented the density-functional theory of matter, has been named the 2010 recipient of the Richard E. Prange Prize and Lectureship in Condensed Matter Theory and Related Areas.

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"Frustrated" systems -- those in which the interacting components cannot reach a single minimum-energy state -- are of enormous interest to fields from neural networks and protein folding to social structures and magnetism. But they have been difficult to study because even systems with small numbers of objects cannot be modeled on the best conventional computers. Now a research team has devised a scalable quantum-mechanical simulation.

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Quantum dots may be small. But they usually don’t let anyone push them around. Now, however, JQI Fellow Edo Waks and colleagues have devised a self-adjusting remote-control system that can place a dot 6 nanometers long to within 45 nm of any desired location. That’s the equivalent of picking up golf balls around a living room and putting them on a coffee table – automatically, from 100 miles away.

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Researchers have devised and demonstrated the first random-number generator in which the numbers are certified random by the laws of quantum mechanics.