Feature Channels: Quantum Mechanics

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Columbia engineers are the first to build a high-performance non-reciprocal device on a compact chip with a performance 25 times better than previous work. The new chip, which can handle several watts of power (enough for cellphone transmitters that put out a watt or so of power), was the leading performer in a DARPA SPAR program to miniaturize these devices and improve performance metrics.

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A team of physicists at the University of Bristol has developed the first integrated photon source with the potential to deliver large-scale quantum photonics.

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Novel quantum dot solar cells developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory match the efficiency of existing quantum-dot based devices, but without lead or other toxic elements that most solar cells of this type rely on.

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Scientists have forced a magnetic crystal into a spin liquid state, which may lead to insights into superconductivity and quantum computing.

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Researchers at New York University and IBM Research have demonstrated a new mechanism involving electron motion in magnetic materials that points to new ways to potentially enhance data storage.

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Until now, electron spins and orbitals were thought to go hand in hand in a class of materials that’s the cornerstone of modern information technology; you couldn’t quickly change one without changing the other. This study raises the possibility of controlling them separately.

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A team of researchers co-led by Berkeley Lab has observed unusually long-lived wavelike electrons called "plasmons" in a new class of electronically conducting material. Plasmons are very important for determining the optical and electronic properties of metals.

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For the second year in a row, a team of scientists from DOE’s Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Laboratories led a demonstration hosted by EPB, a utility and telecommunications company, to test quantum-based technologies that could improve the cybersecurity, longevity and efficiency of the nation’s power grid. Among other successes, the researchers drastically increased the range these resources can cover in collaboration with new industry partner Qubitekk.

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Berkeley Lab’s Kristin Persson shares her thoughts on what inspired her to launch the Materials Project online database, the future of materials research and machine learning, and how she found her own way into a STEM career.

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Research findings published in Nature Communications outline how a national team of researchers supported by the DOE's Office of Science opens up a new dimension of safe hardware for AI and neuromorphic computing.

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Rutgers Professor Gregory W. Moore, a renowned physicist who seeks a unified understanding of the basic forces and fundamental particles in the universe, has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Moore, Board of Governors Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, joins 119 other new academy members and 26 international members this year who were recognized for their distinguished and ongoing achievements in original research.

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Identifying sources of light plays an important role in the development of many photonic technologies, such as lidar, remote sensing, and microscopy. Traditionally, identifying light sources as diverse as sunlight, laser radiation, or molecule fluorescence has required millions of measurements, particularly in low-light environments, which limits the realistic implementation of quantum photonic technologies. In Applied Physics Reviews, researchers demonstrated a smart quantum technology that enables a dramatic reduction in the number of measurements required to identify light sources

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Quantum machine learning, an emerging field that combines machine learning and quantum physics, is the focus of research to discover possible treatments for COVID-19, according to Penn State researchers led by Swaroop Ghosh, the Joseph R. and Janice M. Monkowski Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering. The researchers believe that this method could be faster and more economical than the current methods used for drug discovery.

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At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, researchers working at the intersection of materials science, chemical engineering, and physics are uncovering new and innovative ways to unlock those promising and useful abilities using light, temperature, pressure, or magnetic fields. The groundbreaking discovery of an optical version of quantum hall effect (QHE), published today in Physical Review X, demonstrates the leadership of Rensselaer in this vital research field.

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Six new innovators will be joining Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI), the entrepreneurship program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, as part of the elite program’s fourth cohort.

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Scientists have discovered a light-induced switching mechanism in a Dirac semimetal. The mechanism establishes a new way to control the topological material, driven by back-and-forth motion of atoms and electrons, which will enable topological transistor and quantum computation using light waves.

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Scientists have theorized that organometallic halide perovskites— a class of light harvesting “wonder” materials for applications in solar cells and quantum electronics— are so promising due to an unseen yet highly controversial mechanism called the Rashba effect. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have now experimentally proven the existence of the effect.

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Despite the near-universal assumption of individuality in biology, there is little agreement about what individuals are and few rigorous quantitative methods for their identification. A new approach may solve the problem by defining individuals in terms of informational processes.

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Turning a brittle oxide into a flexible membrane and stretching it on a tiny apparatus flipped it from a conducting to an insulating state and changed its magnetic properties. The technique can be used to study and design a broad range of materials for use in things like sensors and detectors.

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Story Tips: Molding matter atom by atom and seeing inside uranium particles, from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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New measurements confirm, to the highest energies yet explored, that the laws of physics hold no matter where you are or how fast you’re moving.

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New research conducted in part at Brookhaven Laboratory may bring a whole new class of chemical elements into a materials science balancing act for designing alloys for aviation and other applications.

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A Cornell-led collaboration has successfully created such a simulator using ultrathin monolayers that overlap to make a moiré pattern. The team then used this solid-state platform to map a longstanding conundrum in physics: the phase diagram of the triangular lattice Hubbard model.

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Fermilab technology developed for particle accelerators offers a valuable opportunity to search for a hypothesized particle that would resemble a particle of light. These dark photons could help us understand the large part of our universe that we know is there but have yet to observe.

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Neutron scattering instruments at ORNL’s HFIR and SNS are undergoing upgrades which will enable them to study magnetic phenomena previously not possible in the US. Incorporating a device for spherical neutron polarimetry enables the ability to characterize complex magnetic systems in new dimensions for materials that could be developed for enhanced data storage and quantum computing technologies.

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Physicists have unraveled a mystery behind the strange behavior of electrons in a ferromagnet, a finding that could eventually help develop high temperature superconductivity. A Rutgers co-authored study of the unusual ferromagnetic material appears in the journal Nature.

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Berkeley Lab scientists tap into graphene’s hidden talent as an electrically tunable superconductor, insulator, and magnetic device for the advancement of quantum information science

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Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory report fabricating and testing a superconducting nanowire device applicable to high-speed photon counting. This pivotal invention will allow nuclear physics experiments that were previously thought impossible.

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Scientists have begun filling the ICARUS detector at Fermilab with liquid argon, moving one step closer toward neutrino oscillation measurements and the potential discovery of sterile neutrinos.

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One of the most difficult problems to overcome in developing a quantum computer is finding a way to maintain the lifespan of information held in quantum bits, called qubits. Researchers at Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory are working to determine whether devices used in particle accelerators can help solve the problem. The team will run simulations on high-performance computers that will enable them to predict the lifespan of information held within these qubits using smaller versions of these devices, taking us one step closer to the age of quantum computing.

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To use quantum computers on a large scale, we need to improve the technology at their heart – qubits. Qubits are the quantum version of conventional computers’ most basic form of information, bits. The DOE’s Office of Science is supporting research into developing the ingredients and recipes to build these challenging qubits.

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Real-world experiment in Chicago suburbs achieves quantum entanglement across 52-mile fiber network

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LEMONT, IL – On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at noon CST, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Under Secretary for Science Paul M. Dabbar will announce scientists from Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago entangled photons across a 52-mile “quantum loop” in the Chicago suburbs. The quantum loop is a test bed designed to entangle quantum information at distance in real-world conditions. The successful experiment, funded by DOE, is seen as a foundational building block in the development of a quantum internet — potentially a highly secure and far-reaching network of quantum computers and other quantum devices.

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have discovered that applying vibrational motion in a periodic manner may be the key to preventing dissipations of the desired electron states that would make advanced quantum computing and spintronics possible.

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Scientists used unique scanning probe microscopy and spectroscopy techniques to control how electrons moved on the surface of a bismuth-based material (Bi2Te2Se).

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Recent research has shown that 2D materials may have potential as light sources that emit light as single photons.

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A method to observe a new class of topological materials, called Weyl semimetals, has been developed by researchers at Penn State, MIT, Tohoku University, Japan and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. The material’s unusual electronic properties could be useful in future electronics and in quantum physics.

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Photonic integration has focused on communications applications traditionally fabricated on silicon chips, because these are less expensive and more easily manufactured, and researchers are exploring promising new waveguide platforms that provide these same benefits for applications that operate in the ultraviolet to the infrared spectrum. These platforms enable a broader range of applications, such as spectroscopy for chemical sensing, precision metrology and computation. A paper in APL Photonics provides a perspective of the field.

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Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that conventional computers can’t. To use quantum computers on a large scale, we need to improve the technology in qubits. The DOE’s Office of Science is supporting research into developing the ingredients and recipes to build these challenging qubits.

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Scientists may have discovered a quantum phase where magnetic moments of electrons (the strength and orientation of a magnet) inherently change over time and never become ordered even at absolute zero temperature.

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Researchers recently measured a surprising effect for a new type of superconductor: bismuth palladium.

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Researchers in Austria use lasers to levitate and cool a glass nanoparticle into the quantum regime. Although it is trapped in a room temperature environment, the particle’s motion is solely governed by the laws of quantum physics. The team of scientists from the University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published their new study in the journal Science.

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The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that it will establish Quantum Information Science Centers to help lay the foundation for these technologies. As Congress put forth in the National Quantum Initiative Act, the DOE’s Office of Science will make awards for at least two and up to five centers.

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Giant-scale physics experiments are increasingly reliant on big data and complex algorithms fed into powerful computers, and managing this multiplying mass of data presents its own unique challenges. To better prepare for this data deluge posed by next-generation upgrades and new experiments, physicists are turning to the fledgling field of quantum computing.

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Materials that can host this exotic liquid-like magnetic state could be harnessed for next-generation energy and computing applications.

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A team of quantum researchers from ORNL have conducted a series of experiments to gain a better understanding of quantum mechanics and pursue advances in quantum networking and quantum computing, which could lead to practical applications in cybersecurity and other areas.

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Los Alamos scientists have incorporated meticulously engineered colloidal quantum dots into a new type of light emitting diodes (LEDs) containing an integrated optical resonator, which allows them to function as lasers.

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Two-dimensional semiconductors, particularly those made of a class of material known as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), hold exciting potential for a range of current and future technologies, like solar cells, LED lights, and quantum computing. A recently awarded National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant will allow a chemical engineer from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to — along with his team — explore novel uses of TMDCs in an optoelectronic device, which uses light to create electricity.

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A team of physicists has mapped how electron energies vary from region to region in a particular quantum state with unprecedented clarity. This understanding reveals an underlying mechanism by which electrons influence one another, termed quantum “hybridization,” that had been invisible in previous experiments.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $625 million over the next five years to establish two to five multidisciplinary Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers in support of the National Quantum Initiative.