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Category: quantum physics – Page 30

Quantum material opens new path for studying unusual electronic behavior

The work lays the foundation to build a new platform to explore phenomena that could power devices capable of transporting and grouping electrical signals and quantum states in ways not traditionally achievable without relying on optical or engineered systems. The team detailed its findings in a paper published in Science Advances.

Non-Hermitian physics refers to systems that exhibit behaviors not found in conventional physical models, explained Morteza Kayyalha, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Penn State and corresponding author on the paper. These systems can display unusual behaviors, such as enhanced responses to perturbations and external stimuli. They can also demonstrate the non-Hermitian skin effect, where quantum states—which researchers can use to predict the physical properties of a material—become concentrated near a specific boundary or point in the material, rather than spreading uniformly throughout.

Check your ingredients’: A new blueprint for using Fermi’s ‘Golden Rule

Underpinning much of modern technology, from smartphones to scanning tunneling microscopes to particle colliders, is Fermi’s Golden Rule. Named for 20th-century Italian American physicist Enrico Fermi (but actually discovered by British physicist Paul Dirac), the rule is a formula that connects what can be measured in an experiment—such as how fast atoms “jump” between energy states—to the microscopic properties of a quantum mechanical system. The formula is taught in every undergraduate quantum physics class.

Yet scientists sometimes misapply it. They either misjudge the conditions under which the formula works, or they miss the “window” for its use. A “user manual” for Fermi’s Golden Rule would be a boon to researchers, says Yale physicist Nir Navon—and now he and his lab partners have provided one.

“We put one of the most famous formulas in all of quantum mechanics to the test, and found where it works and where it fails, including ways that many physicists weren’t fully aware of,” said Navon, an associate professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and senior author of a new study published in the journal Nature Physics. “We’re telling everyone who uses it to take a breath first and check their ingredients.”

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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