Feature Channels: Quantum Mechanics

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Electrons whizzing around each other and humans crammed together at a political rally don’t seem to have much in common, but researchers at Cornell University are connecting the dots. They’ve developed a highly accurate mathematical approach to predict the behavior of crowds of living creatures, using Nobel Prize-winning methods originally developed to study large collections of quantum mechanically interacting electrons. The implications for the study of human behavior are profound, according to the researchers.

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Qrypt, Inc., has exclusively licensed a novel cyber security technology from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, promising a stronger defense against cyberattacks including those posed by quantum computing.

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International researchers, including UC San Diego physicists, conducted a “Cosmic Bell” test with polarization-entangled photons to further close the “freedom-of-choice” or “free will” loophole. The experiment tests Bell’s inequality, and results push back to at least 7.8 billion years ago the most recent time by which any causal influences from alternative, non-quantum mechanisms could have exploited the loophole.

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Researchers recently discovered that the strength of the magnetic field required to elicit a particular quantum mechanical process corresponds to the temperature of the material. Based on this finding, scientists can determine a sample’s temperature to a resolution of one cubic micron by measuring the field strength at which this effect occurs. Temperature sensing is integral in most industrial, electronic and chemical processes, so greater spatial resolution could benefit commercial and scientific pursuits. The team reports their findings in AIP Advances.

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The first-ever computation of an atomic nucleus, the deuteron, on a quantum chip demonstrates that even today’s rudimentary quantum computers can solve nuclear physics questions.

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Using a principle called wave-particle duality, the team constructed artificial emitters that spontaneously decay by emitting single atoms, rather than single photons.

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Quantum computers work in a fundamentally different way than classical computers. Computer scientists need to start from scratch when creating algorithms for them to run. Three teams from the Department of Energy’s laboratories are developing the foundations for new computer languages and programs.

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Researcher in physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis are working out a theory of thermodynamics in quantum physics and finding some interesting results, including “negative information.”

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The University of Adelaide’s newest Ramsay Fellow, Dr James Quach, will harness the unique properties of quantum mechanics with the aim of building the world’s first quantum battery, a new super battery with the potential for instantaneous charging.

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Scientists have developed a device that uses a small plate to absorb microwave energy and bounce it into laser light—a crucial step for sending quantum signals over long distances.

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Canadian and German research and private sector organizations sign MOU to establish corresponding networks to facilitate national and international collaboration in the use of quantum computing and machine learning tools

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A team led by Associate Professor Yang Hyunsoo from the National University of Singapore Faculty of Engineering has found a practical way to observe and examine the quantum effects of electrons in topological insulators and heavy metals. This could later pave the way for the development of advanced quantum computing components and devices.

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For the first time, physicists discovered that superconducting nanowires made of MoGe alloy undergo quantum phase transitions from a superconducting to a normal metal state in increasing magnetic field at low temperatures. The findings are fully explained by the critical theory.

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University of Adelaide-led research has moved the world one step closer to reliable, high-performance quantum computing.

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Six scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science to receive significant funding for research through its Early Career Research Program.

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Let’s talk! Scientists demonstrate coherent coupling between a quantum dot and a donor atom in silicon, vital for moving information inside quantum computers.

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Researchers at Los Alamos and partners in France and Germany are exploring the enhanced potential of carbon nanotubes as single-photon emitters for quantum information processing. Their analysis of progress in the field is published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature Materials.

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Researchers at QuTech in Delft have succeeded in generating quantum entanglement between two quantum chips faster than the entanglement is lost. Entanglement - once referred to by Einstein as "spooky action" - forms the link that will provide a future quantum internet its power and fundamental security. This opens the door to connect multiple quantum nodes and create the very first quantum network in the world.

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A team of physicists at the University of Vermont have discovered a fundamentally new way surfaces can get wet. Their study may allow scientists to create the thinnest films of liquid ever made—and engineer a new class of surface coatings and lubricants just a few atoms thick.

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A theorized but never-before detected property of quantum matter has now been spotted in the lab.

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Sometimes a good theory just needs the right materials to make it work. That’s the case with recent findings by UT’s physicists and their colleagues, who designed a two-dimensional magnetic system that points to the possibility of devices with increased security and efficiency, using only a small amount of energy

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A research team led by Jigang Wang of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory has developed a new quantum switching scheme that gives them access to new and hidden states of matter. The journal Nature Materials has just published a paper about the discovery.

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A Rutgers-led team of physicists has demonstrated a way to conduct electricity between transistors without energy loss, opening the door to low-power electronics and, potentially, quantum computing that would be far faster than today’s computers. Their findings, which involved using a special mix of materials with magnetic and insulator properties, are published online in Nature Physics.

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Those particles that can be in two places at the same time and are not just particles but also waves appear to move in even weirder ways than previously thought. Theoretical physicists at Georgia Tech applied extreme computing power for a week to predict the movements of fermions by including quantum optics, or light-like, ideas in their mathematical, theoretical modeling.

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Hallgren is one of 11 distinguished faculty to be named to the 2018 Class of Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellows (VBFF) by the DoD. The program provides awards to top-tier engineers and scientists from U.S. universities to conduct “high-risk, high-payoff” research in areas of interest to the DoD over five years, with up to $3 million in support.

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New spectroscopic technique measures heat in itty-bitty volumes that could reveal insights for electronics and energy technology.

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Funded by a $1.6 million award from the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and Harvard University will head a new nationwide graduate student training program for quantum science and engineering.

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A non-twisting laser beam moving through magnetized plasma turns into an optical vortex that traps, rotates, and controls microscopic particles, opening new frontiers in imaging.

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U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry announced that the Department of Energy (DOE) plans to invest up to $30 million over the next three years in Quantum Information Science (QIS).

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Researchers from the Paul Sherrer Institute are studying a fascinating sample using neutrons at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source. Their goal is to create an observable case of quantum spin ice, a bizarre magnetic state found in a special class of materials that could lead to advances in quantum computing.

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Join physicist Roger Melko for a live webcast May 2 as he explores the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to questions in fundamental physics.

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While defects in a diamond are mostly undesirable, certain defects are a quantum physicist’s best friend, having the potential to store bits of information that could one day be used in a quantum computing system. Applied physicists at Cornell University have demonstrated a technique for engineering some of the key optical properties of those defects, providing a new tool for exploring quantum mechanics.

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A group of researchers announced April 26 in Nature that they had managed to entangle perhaps the largest items yet, at a whopping 20 microns across—about the diameter of a single human hair.

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A research team including U of A faculty has developed a method of detecting single photons using quantum dots. Single photon detection using quantum dots is an important element of new technology that could lead to faster and more secure data transfer.

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Trans 1,3-butadiene, the smallest polyene, has challenged researchers over the past 40 years because of its complex excited-state electronic structure and its ultrafast dynamics. Butadiene remains the “missing link” between ethylene, which has only one double bond, and longer linear polyenes with three or more double bonds. Now, an experimental team has solved trans 1,3-butadiene’s electronic-structural dynamics. The researchers recently reported their findings in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Quantum fluids may mix in very weird ways, according to new computer simulations of exotic states of matter known as Bose-Einstein condensates.

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By Kerry Bennett Office of the Vice President for ResearchA new study published in Nature Physics describes how a team of scientists used a laser beam to gain access to long-lived sound waves in crystalline solids as the basis for a potentially new approach to information processing and storage. One of Northern Arizona University’s newest physicists, assistant professor Ryan Behunin, is a co-author of the study.

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Physicists have identified a new state of matter whose structural order operates by rules more aligned with quantum mechanics than standard thermodynamic theory.

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Researchers at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences develop a new theoretical framework to describe how causal structures in quantum mechanics transform. They analyse under which conditions quantum mechanics allows the causal structure of the world to become "fuzzy". In this case, a fixed order of events is not possible.

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An interdisciplinary, interdepartmental group of scientists at ORNL conducted fundamental physics studies at the nanoscale to support development of experimental platforms that will control dissipation in quantum systems and materials.

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Fiber-optic cables package everything from financial data to cat videos into light, but when the signal arrives at your local data center, it runs into a silicon bottleneck. Instead of light, computers run on electrons moving through silicon-based chips, which are less efficient than photonics. To break through, scientists have been developing lasers that work on silicon. In this week’s APL Photonics, researchers write that the future of silicon-based lasers may be in quantum dots.

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A potential revolution in device engineering could be underway, thanks to the discovery of functional electronic interfaces in quantum materials that can self-assemble spontaneously.

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Join physicist Rob Moore for a live webcast Apr. 4 as he explores the subatomic realm of quantum materials, and explains how they may shape our technological future.

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It defies conventional wisdom about semiconductors. It's baffling that it even works. It eludes physics models that try to explain it. This newly tested class of light-emitting semiconductors is so easy to produce from solution that it could be painted onto surfaces to light up our future in myriad colors shining from affordable lasers, LEDs, and even window glass.

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Working together, Miller, Boehme, Vardeny and their colleagues have shown that an organic-based magnet can carry waves of quantum mechanical magnetization, called magnons, and convert those waves to electrical signals. It’s a breakthrough for the field of magnonics (electronic systems that use magnons instead of electrons) because magnons had previously been sent through inorganic materials that are more difficult to handle.

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Columbia Engineers are the first to miniaturize dual-frequency combs by putting two frequency comb generators on a single millimeter-sized silicon-based chip. This could lead to low-cost, portable sensing and spectroscopy in the field in real-time. “This is the first time a dual comb has been generated on a single chip using a single laser,” says Electrical Engineering Prof. Michal Lipson who led the team with Applied Physics Prof. Alexander Gaeta. (Science Advances)

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First known material capable of emitting single photons at room temperature and telecom wavelengths.

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Current generated when light hits a material reveals electrons behaving like an elusive particle.

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A team of researchers led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has demonstrated a new method for splitting light beams into their frequency modes, work that could spur advancements in quantum information processing and distributed quantum computing.