For the first time ever, researchers succeeded in keeping a qubit coherent for more than 1 millisecond.
Category: quantum physics – Page 2
Precision at the smallest scale
Imagine a high-tech workshop where scientists and engineers craft objects so small they can’t be seen with the naked eye — or even a standard microscope. These tiny structures — nanostructures — are thousands of times smaller than a strand of hair. And they are essential for faster computers, better smartphones and life-saving medical devices.
Nanostructures are at the core of the research happening every day in the Washington Nanofabrication Facility (WNF). Part of the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems at the UW and located in Fluke Hall, the WNF supports cutting-edge academic and industry research, prototyping and hands-on student training. Like many leading nanofabrication centers, it is part of the National Science Foundation’s National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, a network that shares expertise and resources.
Step inside the Washington Nanofabrication Facility, where tiny tech is transforming research in quantum, chips, medicine and more.
Quantum clocks deliver navigation accuracy far beyond current GPS systems in naval tests
Optical quantum clocks developed at the University of Adelaide have been proven to outperform GPS navigation systems by many orders of magnitude. The clocks, which were put through their paces in naval exercises, were designed to be robust enough to withstand being rocked by waves while they are on ships.
Previous versions of clocks that operate at this level of accuracy are not portable, as they require large amounts of lab space and are too sensitive to motion and changes in temperature.
The clocks were developed by a team led by the University of Adelaide’s Professor Andre Luiten, Chief Innovator and Chair of Experimental Physics at the Institute of Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS), in partnership with colleagues at the Defense Science and Technology Group (DSTG).
Scientists unlock key manufacturing challenge for next-generation optical chips
Researchers at the University of Strathclyde have developed a new method for assembling ultra-small, light-controlling devices, paving the way for scalable manufacturing of advanced optical systems used in quantum technologies, telecommunications and sensing.
The study, published in Nature Communications, centers on photonic crystal cavities (PhCCs), micron-scale structures that trap and manipulate light with extraordinary precision. These are essential components for high-performance technologies ranging from quantum computing to photonic artificial intelligence.
Until now, the creation of large arrays of PhCCs has been severely limited by the tiny variations introduced during fabrication. Even nanometer-scale imperfections can drastically shift each device’s optical properties, making it impossible to build arrays of identical units directly on-chip.
Quantum battery device lasts much longer than previous demonstrations
Researchers from RMIT University and CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, have unveiled a method to significantly extend the lifetime of quantum batteries—1,000 times longer than previous demonstrations.
A quantum battery is a theoretical concept that emerged from research in quantum science and technology.
Unlike traditional batteries, which rely on chemical reactions, quantum batteries use quantum superposition and interactions between electrons and light to achieve faster charging times and potentially enhanced storage capacity.
Elusive romance of top-quark pairs observed at Large Hadron Collider
An unforeseen feature in proton-proton collisions previously observed by the CMS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has now been confirmed by its sister experiment ATLAS.
The result, reported yesterday at the European Physical Society’s High-Energy Physics conference in Marseille, suggests that top quarks —the heaviest and shortest-lived of all the elementary particles—can momentarily pair up with their antimatter counterparts to produce a “quasi-bound-state” called toponium. Further input based on complex theoretical calculations of the strong nuclear force—called quantum chromodynamics (QCD)—will enable physicists to understand the true nature of this elusive dance.
High-energy collisions between protons at the LHC routinely produce top quark–antiquark pairs. Measuring the probability, or cross section, of this process is both an important test of the Standard Model of particle physics and a powerful way to search for the existence of new particles that are not described by the theory.
New quantum record: Transmon qubit coherence reaches millisecond threshold
On July 8, 2025, physicists from Aalto University in Finland published a transmon qubit coherence measurement in Nature Communications that dramatically surpasses previous scientifically published records. The millisecond coherence measurement marks a quantum leap in computational technology, with the previous maximum echo coherence measurements approaching 0.6 milliseconds.
Longer qubit coherence allows for an extended window of time in which quantum computers can execute error-free operations, enabling more complex quantum computations and more quantum logic operations before errors occur. Not only does this allow for more calculations with noisy quantum computers, but it also decreases the resources needed for quantum error correction, which is a path to noiseless quantum computing.
“We have just measured an echo coherence time for a transmon qubit that landed at a millisecond at maximum with a median of half a millisecond,” says Mikko Tuokkola, the Ph.D. student who conducted and analyzed the measurements. The median reading is particularly significant, as it also surpasses current recorded readings.
Black-hole solutions in quantum gravity with Vilkovisky-DeWitt effective action
Physicists propose that calculations of certain aspects of quantum gravity can currently be done even without a full theory of quantum gravity itself. Basically, they work backwards from the fact that quantum gravity on the macro scale must conform to Einstein’s relativity theories. This approach is effective until the small scale of a black hole singularity is close.
(See my Comment below for an article link to POPULAR MECHANICS that discussed the scientific article in an accessible manner.
We study new black-hole solutions in quantum gravity. We use the Vilkovisky-DeWitt unique effective action to obtain quantum gravitational corrections to Einstein’s equations. In full analogy to previous work done for quadratic gravity, we find new black-hole–like solutions. We show that these new solutions exist close to the horizon and in the far-field limit.
Elusive romance of top-quark pairs observed at the LHC
An unforeseen feature in proton-proton collisions previously observed by the CMS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has now been confirmed by its sister experiment ATLAS. The result, reported yesterday at the European Physical Society’s High-Energy Physics conference in Marseille, suggests that top quarks – the heaviest and shortest-lived of all the elementary particles – can momentarily pair up with their antimatter counterparts to produce a “quasi-bound-state” called toponium. Further input based on complex theoretical calculations of the strong nuclear force — called quantum chromodynamics (QCD) — will enable physicists to understand the true nature of this elusive dance.
High-energy collisions between protons at the LHC routinely produce top quark–antiquark pairs. Measuring the probability, or cross section, of this process is both an important test of the Standard Model of particle physics and a powerful way to search for the existence of new particles that are not described by the theory.
Last year, CMS researchers were analysing a large sample of top quark–antiquark production data collected from 2016 to 2018 to search for new types of Higgs bosons when they observed something unusual. The team saw a surplus of top quark–antiquark pairs, which is often considered as a smoking gun for the presence of new particles. Intriguingly, the excess appeared at the very minimum energy required to produce such a pair of top quarks. This led the team to consider an alternative hypothesis of something that had long been considered too difficult to detect at the LHC: a short-lived union of a top quark and a top antiquark.