Quantum information systems, systems that process, store or transmit information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could, in principle, outperform classical systems in some optimization, computational, sensing, and learning tasks. An important aspect of quantum information science is the reliable quantification of quantum states in a system, to verify that they match desired (i.e., target) states.
People tend to think of quantum materials—whose properties arise from quantum mechanical effects—as exotic curiosities. But some quantum materials have become a ubiquitous part of our computer hard drives, TV screens, and medical devices. Still, the vast majority of quantum materials never accomplish much outside of the lab.
What makes certain quantum materials commercial successes and others commercially irrelevant? If researchers knew, they could direct their efforts toward more promising materials—a big deal since they may spend years studying a single material.
Now, MIT researchers have developed a system for evaluating the scale-up potential of quantum materials. Their framework combines a material’s quantum behavior with its cost, supply chain resilience, environmental footprint, and other factors.
Weather forecasting is a powerful tool. During hurricane season, for instance, meteorologists create computer simulations to forecast how these destructive storms form and where they might travel, which helps prevent damage to coastal communities.
When you’re trying to forecast space weather, rather than storms on Earth, creating these simulations gets a little more complex.
To simulate space weather, you would need to fit the Sun, the planets, and the vast empty space between them in a virtual environment, also known as a simulation box, where all the calculations would take place.
There are a wide range of applications for Fu and Yao’s new neuron, from redesigning computers along bio-inspired, and far more efficient principles, to electronic devices that could speak to our bodies directly.
“We currently have all kinds of wearable electronic sensing systems,” says Yao, “but they are comparatively clunky and inefficient. Every time they sense a signal from our body, they have to electrically amplify it so that a computer can analyze it. That intermediate step of amplification increases both power consumption and the circuit’s complexity, but sensors built with our low-voltage neurons could do without any amplification at all.”
The secret ingredient in the team’s new low-powered neuron is a protein nanowire synthesized from the remarkable bacteria Geobacter sulfurreducens, which also has the superpower of producing electricity. Yao, along with various colleagues, have used the bacteria’s protein nanowires to design a whole host of extraordinary efficient devices: a biofilm, powered by sweat, that can power personal electronics; an “electronic nose” that can sniff out disease; and a device, which can be built of nearly anything, that can harvest electricity from thin air itself.
Scientists have achieved a breakthrough in analog computing, developing a programmable electronic circuit that harnesses the properties of high-frequency electromagnetic waves to perform complex parallel processing at light-speed.
The discovery points to a new era of computing that operates far beyond the limits of conventional digital electronics, using less energy, while performing massive calculations.
The study, “Programmable circuits for analog matrix computations,” has been published in Nature Communications.
In science and engineering, it’s unusual for innovation to come in one fell swoop. It’s more often a painstaking plod through which the extraordinary gradually becomes ordinary.
But we may be at an inflection point along that path when it comes to engineered structures whose mechanical properties are unlike anything seen before in nature, also known as mechanical metamaterials. A team led by researchers at the University of Michigan and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has shown how to 3D print intricate tubes that can use their complex structure to stymie vibrations.
Such structures could be useful in a variety of applications where people want to dampen vibrations, including transportation, civil engineering and more. The team’s new study, published in the journal Physical Review Applied, builds on decades of theoretical and computational research to create structures that passively impede vibrations trying to move from one end to the other.
Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, steered very thin conductors from superconductivity to insulation—creating an “impossible,” strange state between the two mutually exclusive states.
Materials research is absolutely crucial when dealing with quantum states. Whatever material is used as the basis for creating controllable quantum states, like if you want to build applications using quantum states for computing, sensing, or communication, the materials often define to what extent you can eliminate the ever-present noise that disturbs or even disrupts the desired “clean” quantum states or signals. It is an ongoing battle.
The team led by Saulius Vaitiekenas, associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, has succeeded in creating what is supposed to be an impossible intermediate state between superconductor = absolutely no resistance or loss of electrical connection—and total insulation = complete shut-off of the electrical signal.