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New magnetic sensor material discovered using high-throughput experimental method

A NIMS research team has developed a new experimental method capable of rapidly evaluating numerous material compositions by measuring anomalous Hall resistivity 30 times faster than conventional methods. By analyzing the vast amount of data obtained using machine learning and experimentally validating the predictions, the team succeeded in developing a new magnetic sensor material capable of detecting magnetism with much higher sensitivity. This research was published in npj Computational Materials on September 3, 2025.

The anomalous Hall effect is a phenomenon in which a voltage is generated in a magnetic material when an electric current flows through it, appearing in the direction perpendicular to both the current and the material’s magnetization (that is, from the north to the south magnetic pole). By leveraging this property, changes in magnetization can be sensitively detected as electrical signals, making the effect promising for applications such as read heads in next-generation hard disk drives and high-performance magnetic sensors.

Controlling quantum states in germanene using only an electric field

Researchers at the University of Twente and Utrecht University demonstrated for the first time that quantum states in the ultra-narrow material germanene can be switched on and off using only an electric field. The researchers were able to vary the electric field strength very precisely, causing the special ‘topological’ states in nanoribbons to disappear or appear.

The research, titled “Electric-Field Control of Zero-Dimensional Topological States in Ultranarrow Germanene Nanoribbons,” is published in Physical Review Letters.

Quantum computers will not use zeros and ones, but instead use quantum bits that can assume both states simultaneously. In theory, this makes them superfast and powerful, but in practice, building quantum bits is an enormous challenge: they are very sensitive to noise and quickly lose their information.

High pressure increases terahertz emission 13-fold in 2D semiconductor GaTe, study reveals

A new study led by the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with their collaborators, has demonstrated that high pressure can significantly enhance and precisely tune terahertz (THz) radiation from the two-dimensional semiconductor gallium telluride (GaTe).

Using a diamond anvil cell, the research team achieved a 13-fold increase in THz emission and directly mapped the sequence of ultrafast processes that produce THz waves.

Their findings are published in Laser & Photonics Reviews.

Calibrating qubit charge to make quantum computers even more reliable

Quantum computers will be able to assume highly complex tasks in the future. With superconducting quantum processors, however, it has thus far been difficult to read out experimental results because measurements can cause interfering quantum state transitions.

Researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Université de Sherbrooke in Québec have performed experiments that improve our understanding of these processes and have shown that calibrating the charge at the qubits contributes to fault avoidance.

Their findings have been published in Physical Review Letters.

Dislocations without crystals: Burgers vectors discovered in glass

For nearly a century, scientists have understood how crystalline materials—such as metals and semiconductors—bend without breaking. Their secret lies in tiny, line-like defects called dislocations, which move through an orderly atomic lattice and carry deformation with them.

At the heart of this theory is a geometric quantity known as the Burgers vector, experimentally observed for the first time in the 1950s, which precisely measures how much the lattice is distorted by a dislocation. This concept became one of the cornerstones of modern materials science.

Glasses, however, have always stood apart. From window glass and polymers to metallic glasses and many soft materials, glasses lack the regular atomic structure of crystals. Their particles are arranged randomly, frozen into disordered atomic configurations.

Noise-proof quantum sensor uses three calcium ions held in place by electric fields

Researchers at the University of Innsbruck have shown that quantum sensors can remain highly accurate even in extremely noisy conditions. It’s the first experimental realization of a powerful quantum sensing protocol, outperforming all comparable classical strategies—even under overwhelming noise.

The study has been published in Physical Review Letters.

Quantum sensors promise unprecedented measurement precision, but their advantage can quickly erode in realistic environments where noise dominates.

The case for an antimatter Manhattan project

Chemical rockets have taken us to the moon and back, but traveling to the stars demands something more powerful. Space X’s Starship can lift extraordinary masses to orbit and send payloads throughout the solar system using its chemical rockets, but it cannot fly to nearby stars at 30% of light speed and land. For missions beyond our local region of space, we need something fundamentally more energetic than chemical combustion, and physics offers, or, in other words, antimatter.

When antimatter encounters ordinary matter, they annihilate completely, converting mass directly into energy according to Einstein’s equation E=mc². That c² term is approximately 10¹⁷, an almost incomprehensibly large number. This makes antimatter roughly 1,000 times more energetic than nuclear fission, the most powerful energy source currently in practical use.

As a source of energy, antimatter can potentially enable spacecraft to reach nearby stars at significant fractions of the speed of light. A detailed technical analysis by Casey Handmer, CEO of Terraform Industries, outlines how humanity could develop practical antimatter propulsion within existing spaceflight budgets, requiring breakthroughs in three critical areas; production efficiency, reliable storage systems, and engine designs that can safely harness the most energetic fuel physically possible.

HIE-ISOLDE: Ten years, ten highlights

The Isotope Separator On-Line facility (ISOLDE) directs a proton beam from the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB) onto specially developed thick targets, producing low-energy beams of radioactive nuclei—those with too many or too few neutrons to be stable. These beams can be further accelerated to energies of up to 10 MeV per nucleon using the HIE-ISOLDE linear accelerator, enabling a wide range of studies.

The HIE-ISOLDE beams are sent to three experimental stations: the Miniball array of high-purity germanium gamma-ray detectors, the ISOLDE solenoid spectrometer (ISS), which repurposed a former MRI magnet, and the scattering experimental chamber (SEC), used for a broad variety of physics experiments. Since its first experiment in October 2015, HIE-ISOLDE has been pushing back the boundaries of nuclear physics. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, we look back at 10 key achievements that have defined its first decade.

New digital state of matter could help build stable quantum computers

Scientists have taken another major step toward creating stable quantum computers. Using a specialized quantum computer chip (an essential component of a quantum computer) as a kind of tiny laboratory, a team led by Pan Jianwei at the University of Science and Technology of China has created and studied a rare and complex type of matter called higher-order nonequilibrium topological phases.

This digital matter (not conventional physical material) is unique because its key behaviors are super-stable and located only at its corners. But this stability is only maintained when the material is constantly bombarded with energy pulses.

The work is a big deal because it shows that quantum computers can be used as reliable simulators to discover and test new stable forms of matter. This will be necessary if scientists are to create quantum computers that never break down (or are at least highly reliable), because super-stable corner behaviors are the kind of error-proof properties needed to build trustworthy quantum hardware.

Natural language found more complex than it strictly needs to be—and for good reason

Human languages are complex phenomena. Around 7,000 languages are spoken worldwide, some with only a handful of remaining speakers, while others, such as Chinese, English, Spanish and Hindi, are spoken by billions. Despite their profound differences, they all share a common function: they convey information by combining individual words into phrases—groups of related words—which are then assembled into sentences. Each of these units has its own meaning, which in combination ultimately form a comprehensible whole.

“This is actually a very complex structure. Since the natural world tends toward maximizing efficiency and conserving resources, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask why the brain encodes linguistic information in such an apparently complicated way instead of digitally, like a computer,” explains Michael Hahn.

Hahn, Professor of Computational Linguistics at Saarland University, has been examining this question together with his colleague Richard Futrell from the University of California, Irvine. The paper is published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

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