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Category: quantum physics – Page 3

Using mechanical vibrations instead of magnetic memory for quantum computing

Quantum computers still face limits when it comes to storing information. Researchers at ETH Zurich are now turning to mechanical vibrations rather than electromagnetic memory. Their new vibrating memory can store significantly more information in a smaller volume. Combined with a suitable computer architecture, it also enables the efficient solution of complex computational problems.

The computer works almost like a guitar. The ETH Zurich quantum physicist Yiwen Chu and her team use tiny mechanical vibrations to store and process information. These vibrations behave much like the vibrating strings of a guitar, which produce musical notes.

What sounds like music is, in fact, quantum physics. The vibrations that Chu and her team work with are far beyond the range of human hearing. They occur deep inside a quantum chip, where they are used to store quantum information.

New physics-based machine-learning method speeds search for 2D quantum materials

Researchers at The University of Manchester have developed a new computational approach to help identify two-dimensional materials that may host unusual quantum behavior. The work, published in Science Advances, focuses on materials with “flat bands,” electronic states where electrons have very little kinetic energy. In these materials, interactions between electrons can become much more important, creating conditions linked to phenomena such as magnetism, unconventional superconductivity and topological electronic behavior.

Finding real materials with flat bands from large datasets is difficult. Conventional searches often rely on density functional theory calculations, which can reveal a material’s electronic structure but are time-consuming when applied across thousands of possible candidates.

The Manchester team took a different route. They developed a physics-informed scoring system that captures two signatures of flat-band behavior, low band dispersion and a strong peak in the density of states, then trained a model to estimate that score directly from atomic structure.

Long-theorized electron-on-helium qubit achieves strong coupling to a single microwave photon

Quantum computers, devices that store and process information leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics, have been found to be promising for tackling some problems that cannot be solved by classical computers. Quantum computers store data in the form of qubits (i.e., quantum bits), units of information that can exist in combinations of different states, instead of being limited to a binary value (i.e., 0 or 1), like classical bits.

For decades, various theoretical physicists have been exploring the possibility of building a quantum computing system using electrons trapped above the surface of superfluid helium, a form of liquid helium cooled to extremely low temperatures. These trapped electrons could ultimately be more isolated from sources of noise (i.e., environmental disturbances) that can disrupt quantum states and lead to computational errors.

Researchers at EeroQ Corporation, a quantum computing company based in Chicago, recently introduced a strategy to enable strong interactions between a single electron floating above superfluid helium and a microwave photon.

Fractional Fermi Sea: Physicists Discover a New Phase of Matter Beyond Established Theory

Scientists have engineered a never-before-seen quantum state, uncovering a new phase of matter with hidden order beyond conventional theory.

Researchers have shown that an unusual quantum state known as a “fractional Fermi sea” can be deliberately created, opening the door to a previously unknown phase of matter. The work, published in Physical Review Letters, was carried out by the Nägerl group together with theoretical collaborator Alvise Bastianello of the CNRS and Université Paris-Dauphine. The study provides the theoretical foundation for recent experimental work led by Hans-Christoph Nägerl’s group in the Department of Experimental Physics.

Creating a New Quantum State.

We FINALLY Know What Happened Before the Big Bang

Have you ever wondered what existed before the Big Bang? For decades, scientists believed that this question had no answer. But new ideas in cosmology and theoretical physics are challenging that assumption.

In this video, we explore some of the most fascinating scientific theories about what may have happened before the birth of our universe. From quantum gravity and cosmic bounces to eternal inflation, multiverse models, and the possibility that our universe emerged from a previous cosmic cycle, these concepts push the boundaries of modern science.

Could time itself have existed before the Big Bang? Was our universe born from the collapse of another? Or is the Big Bang not the true beginning after all?

Join us as we dive into the latest research, thought-provoking hypotheses, and the biggest unanswered questions about the origin of reality.

If you enjoy videos about space, black holes, the universe, and the greatest mysteries of physics, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more cosmic explorations.

#BigBang #Universe #Cosmology #Space #Astronomy #Physics #Science #BlackHoles #Multiverse #JWST

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Evidence of elusive high-energy gravitons in quantum Hall systems

Electrons, negatively charged particles, sometimes coordinate their movements in ways that produce certain collective excitations referred to as quasiparticles. One case in which this occurs is the quantum Hall effect, a phenomenon that emerges when electrons are confined to a very thin layer, cooled to temperatures around 0 kelvin and exposed to a very strong magnetic field.

A framework called parton theory hypothesized the existence of emergent partons (i.e., quark-like quasiparticles in condensed matter physics that should not be confused with quarks and gluons in particle physics) to explain the collective excitations of quantum Hall states.

Recent geometric theoretical frameworks also suggest that small fluctuations in a system’s quantum metric (i.e., a quantity describing the ‘shape’ of a quantum state) produce collective spin-2 excitations referred to as chiral gravitons.

Quantum computers model nine fusion fuel material configurations for first time

A team of scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Cleveland Clinic and IBM has calculated nine molecular configurations of a promising material to produce fuel for fusion energy—the first known instance of such computations on quantum computers.

Such calculations, demonstrated in a new paper published on the arXiv preprint server, are computationally challenging for classical computers to scale when working alone. They are a fundamental step toward optimizing the production and extraction of tritium—an extremely rare material in nature that is necessary to produce fusion energy with most of the proposed machines. Ensuring adequate supplies of tritium has long been a barrier to realizing the promise of clean, abundant energy from fusion power plants, and solving this issue is a key objective of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission.

Quantum computers are well-suited to computing the atomic-level chemistry of a liquid salt that contains fluorine, lithium and beryllium (FLiBe), one of the leading candidate materials for extracting tritium fuel in fusion reactors. To compute different configurations of clusters of FLiBe, the team used the same quantum-centric supercomputing techniques now being applied to 12,635-atom protein simulations with Cleveland Clinic. These methods can calculate the quantum behavior of electrons in complex materials, complementing and enhancing the capabilities of classical supercomputers and algorithms.

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