Many substances change their properties when they are cooled below a certain critical temperature. Such a phase transition occurs, for example, when water freezes. However, in certain metals there are phase transitions that do not exist in the macrocosm. They arise because of the special laws of...

A team led by Prof. Li Chuanfeng and Prof. Xu Jinshi from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), collaborating with Prof. Chen Jingling from Nankai University and Prof. Adán Cabello from the University of Seville, studied the single-system...

An interdisciplinary team at the Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley's Quantum Nanoelectronics Laboratory (QNL) achieved a technical breakthrough using qutrits—three-level systems—on a superconducting...

Quantum computers, machines that perform computations exploiting quantum mechanical phenomena, could eventually outperform classical computers on some tasks, by utilizing quantum mechanical resources such as state superpositions and entanglement. However, the quantum states that they rely on to...

Envision a realm where light can be meticulously controlled and manipulated at minuscule scales, unlocking unprecedented potentials for nanotechnology and quantum information technology. Recent breakthroughs in quantum research have propelled us closer to a reality that may be more achievable than...

What good is a powerful computer if you can't read its output? Or readily reprogram it to do different jobs? People who design quantum computers face these challenges, and a new device may make them easier to solve....

Using a new technique, researchers at the University of Basel have succeeded in cooling a small membrane down to temperatures close to absolute zero using only laser light. Such extremely cooled membranes could, for instance, find applications in highly sensitive sensors....

A new type of miniature atomic clock could provide better timing over the span of weeks and months compared with current systems. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with researchers from Georgia Tech, have made the first-of-its-kind chip-scale...

When a photon interacts with a material, an interaction occurs that causes its atoms to change their quantum state (a description of the physical properties of nature at the atomic level). The resulting state is called, aptly, photoexcitation. These photoexcitations are conventionally assumed to...

The discovery of the quantum Hall effects in the 1980s revealed the existence of novel states of matter called "Laughlin states," in honor of the American Nobel prize winner who successfully characterized them theoretically. These exotic states specifically emerge in 2D materials, at very low...