Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists develop an energy-efficient strategy to reversibly change ‘spin orientation’ or magnetization direction in magnetite at room temperature.

Over the last few decades, conventional electronics has been rapidly reaching its technical limits in computing and information technology, calling for innovative devices that go beyond the mere manipulation of electron current. In this regard, spintronics, the study of devices that exploit the “spin” of electrons to perform functions, is one of the hottest areas in applied physics. But, measuring, altering, and, in general, working with this fundamental quantum property is no mean feat.

Current spintronic devices — for example, magnetic tunnel junctions — suffer from limitations such as high-power consumption, low operating temperatures, and severe constraints in material selection. To this end, a team of scientists at Tokyo University of Science and the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, has published a study in ACS Nano, in which they present a surprisingly simple yet efficient strategy to manipulate the magnetization angle in magnetite (Fe₃O₄), a typical ferromagnetic material.

Circa 2015 In theory this big bang laser could eventually create complex matter but would need to be pocket-size as I want it on a smartphone to make a replicator so I can make fruit or food in space 😀

The Institute of Laser Engineering (ILE), Osaka University, has succeeded to reinforce the Petawatt laser “LFEX” to deliver up to 2000 trillion watts in the duration of one trillionth of one second (this corresponds to 1000 times the integrated electric power consumed in the world). By using this high-power laser, it is now possible to generate all of the high-energy quantum beams (electrons, ions, gamma ray, neutron, positron). Owing to such quantum beams with large current, we can make a big step forward not only for creating new fundamental technologies such as medical applications and non-destructive inspection of social infrastructures to contribute to our future life of longevity, safety, and security, but also for realization of laser fusion energy triggered by fast ignition.

Background and output of research

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Free-space optical communication, the communication between two devices at a distance using light to carry information, is a highly promising system for achieving high-speed communication. This system of communication is known to be immune to electromagnetic interference (EMI), a disturbance generated by external sources that affects electrical circuits and can disrupt radio signals.

While some studies have highlighted the possible advantages of free-space optical communication, this system of communication has so far come with certain limitations. Most notably, it is known to offer limited security against eavesdroppers. Researchers at Télécom Paris (member of Institut Polytechnique de Paris), mirSense, Technische Universität Darmstadt and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have recently introduced a unique system for more secure free-space optical communication based on a technology known as quantum cascade laser, a specific type of semiconductor laser that typically emits mid–infrared light.

“The core idea behind our research is that private free-space communication with quantum key distribution (i.e., based on quantum physics properties) is promising, but it is probably years away, or even further,” Olivier Spitz, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “Currently, the main limitations of this technology are the requirements for cryogenic systems, very slow data rates and costly equipment.”

University of Innsbruck researchers have developed a method to make previously hardly accessible properties in quantum systems measurable. The new method for determining the quantum state in quantum simulators reduces the number of necessary measurements and makes work with quantum simulators much more efficient.

In a few years, a new generation of quantum simulators could provide insights that would not be possible using simulations on conventional supercomputers. Quantum simulators are capable of processing a great amount of information since they quantum mechanically superimpose an enormously large number of bit states. For this reason, however, it also proves difficult to read this information out of the quantum simulator. In order to be able to reconstruct the quantum state, a very large number of individual measurements are necessary. The method used to read out the quantum state of a quantum simulator is called quantum state tomography.

“Each measurement provides a ‘cross-sectional image’ of the quantum state. You then put these cross-sectional images together to form the complete quantum state,” explains theoretical physicist Christian Kokail from Peter Zoller’s team at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck. The number of measurements needed in the lab increases very rapidly with the size of the system. “The number of measurements grows exponentially with the number of qubits,” the physicist says. The Innsbruck researchers have now succeeded in developing a much more efficient method for quantum simulators.

Circa 2019

Decay is relentless in the macroscopic world: broken objects do not fit themselves back together again. However, other laws are valid in the quantum world: new research shows that so-called quasiparticles can decay and reorganize themselves again and are thus become virtually immortal. These are good prospects for the development of durable data memories.

U.K. start-up Arqit expects to launch a worldwide service for sharing unbreakable quantum-encrypted messages using satellites in 2023.

In three towering papers, a team of mathematicians has worked out the details of Liouville quantum field theory, a two-dimensional model of quantum gravity.

Biological systems are dynamical, constantly exchanging energy and matter with the environment in order to maintain the non-equilibrium state synonymous with living. Developments in observational techniques have allowed us to study biological dynamics on increasingly small scales. Such studies have revealed evidence of quantum mechanical effects, which cannot be accounted for by classical physics, in a range of biological processes. Quantum biology is the study of such processes, and here we provide an outline of the current state of the field, as well as insights into future directions.

Quantum mechanics is the fundamental theory that describes the properties of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, molecular assemblies and possibly beyond. Quantum mechanics operates on the nanometre and sub-nanometre scales and is at the basis of fundamental life processes such as photosynthesis, respiration and vision. In quantum mechanics, all objects have wave-like properties, and when they interact, quantum coherence describes the correlations between the physical quantities describing such objects due to this wave-like nature.

In photosynthesis, respiration and vision, the models that have been developed in the past are fundamentally quantum mechanical. They describe energy transfer and electron transfer in a framework based on surface hopping. The dynamics described by these models are often ‘exponential’ and follow from the application of Fermi’s Golden Rule [1, 2]. As a consequence of averaging the rate of transfer over a large and quasi-continuous distribution of final states the calculated dynamics no longer display coherences and interference phenomena. In photosynthetic reaction centres and light-harvesting complexes, oscillatory phenomena were observed in numerous studies performed in the 1990s and were typically ascribed to the formation of vibrational or mixed electronic–vibrational wavepackets.

Physics World

Experiment shows that classical clocks exhibit the same relationship between entropy and accuracy as their quantum counterparts.