Thomas Edison famously tried hundreds of materials and failed thousands of times before discovering that carbonized cotton thread burned long and bright in an incandescent light bulb. Experiments are often time-consuming (Edison's team spent 14 months) and expensive (the winning combination cost...

When two heavy ions collide at very high relativistic energies, they penetrate one another, during which they become excited and are slowed down. This "stopping" process can be generated experimentally, as demonstrated on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Europe's CERN research center in Geneva...

An international research team has succeeded for the first time in measuring the electron spin in matter—i.e., the curvature of space in which electrons live and move—within "kagome materials," a new class of quantum materials....

Quantum information (QI) processing may be the next game changer in the evolution of technology, by providing unprecedented computational capabilities, security and detection sensitivities. Qubits, the basic hardware element for quantum information, are the building block for quantum computers and...

Findings published in Nature settle the dispute: phonons can be chiral. This fundamental concept, discovered using circular X-ray light, sees phonons twisting like a corkscrew through quartz....

One of the most high-profile mysteries in physics today is what scientists refer to as the "Strong CP Problem." Stemming from the puzzling phenomenon that neutrons do not interact with electric fields despite being made up of quarks—smaller, fundamental particles that carry electric charges—the...

Polarized electrons are electrons in which spins have a "preferred" orientation or are preferentially oriented in a specific direction. The realization of these electrons has notable implications for physics research, as it can pave the way toward the creation of promising materials and enable new...

A newly discovered phenomenon dubbed "collectively induced transparency" (CIT) causes groups of atoms to abruptly stop reflecting light at specific frequencies....

Hidden stripes in a crystal could help scientists understand the mysterious behavior of electrons in certain quantum systems, including high-temperature superconductors, an unexpected discovery by RIKEN physicists suggests....

Researchers at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Vienna recently devised a universal mechanism to invert the evolution of a qubit with a high probability of success. This protocol, outlined in Physical Review Letters, can propagate any target qubit back to the state...