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Category: quantum physics – Page 512

## SCIENCE ADVANCES • MAY 24, 2021 # *by Vienna University of Technology*

In everyday life, phase transitions usually have to do with temperature changes--for example, when an ice cube gets warmer and melts. But there are also different kinds of phase transitions, depending on other parameters such as magnetic field. In order to understand the quantum properties of materials, phase transitions are particularly interesting when they occur directly at the absolute zero point of temperature. These transitions are called "quantum phase transitions" or a "quantum critical points."

Such a quantum critical point has now been discovered by an Austrian-American research team in a novel material, and in an unusually pristine form. The properties of this material are now being further investigated.

It is suspected that the material could be a so-called Weyl-Kondo semimetal, which is considered to have great potential for quantum technology due to special quantum states (so-called topological states). If this proves to be true, a key for the targeted development of topological quantum materials would have been found.

This surprising result is probably related to the fact that the behavior of electrons in this material has some special features. "It is a highly correlated electron system. This means that the electrons interact strongly with each other, and that you cannot explain their behavior by looking at the electrons individually.

Continue reading “New quantum material discovered” | >

In the last few years, several technology companies including Google, Microsoft, and IBM, have massively invested in quantum computing systems based on microwave superconducting circuit platforms in an effort to scale them up from small research-oriented systems to commercialized computing platforms. But fulfilling the potential of quantum computers requires a significant increase in the number of qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers, which can store and manipulate quantum information.

But quantum signals can be contaminated by thermal noise generated by the movement of electrons. To prevent this, superconducting quantum systems must operate at ultra-low temperatures—less than 20 milli-Kelvin—which can be achieved with cryogenic helium-dilution refrigerators.

The output microwave signals from such systems are amplified by low-noise high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) at low temperatures. Signals are then routed outside the refrigerator by microwave , which are the easiest solutions to control and read but are poor heat isolators, and take up a lot of space; this becomes a problem when we need to scale up qubits in the thousands.

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A research team from TU Wien together with US research institutes came across a surprising form of ‘quantum criticality’; this could lead to a design concept for new materials.

In everyday life, phase transitions usually have to do with temperature changes — for example, when an ice cube gets warmer and melts. But there are also different kinds of phase transitions, depending on other parameters such as magnetic field. In order to understand the quantum properties of materials, phase transitions are particularly interesting when they occur directly at the absolute zero point of temperature. These transitions are called “quantum phase transitions” or a “quantum critical points.”

Such a quantum critical point has now been discovered by an Austrian-American research team in a novel material, and in an unusually pristine form. The properties of this material are now being further investigated. It is suspected that the material could be a so-called Weyl-Kondo semimetal, which is considered to have great potential for quantum technology due to special quantum states (so-called topological states). If this proves to be true, a key for the targeted development of topological quantum materials would have been found. The results were found in a cooperation between TU Wien, Johns Hopkins University, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Rice University and has now been published in the journal Science Advances.

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Physicists in Germany say they have found definitive evidence for the existence of superfluidity in an extremely cold 2D gas of fermions. Their experiment involved confining a few thousand lithium atoms inside a specially-designed trap, and they say that the finding could help shed light on the role of reduced dimensionality in high-temperature superconductors.

Understanding the mechanisms that allow electrical current to flow without resistance inside cuprate materials at ambient pressure and at temperatures of up to 133 K is one of the biggest outstanding challenges in condensed-matter physics. Although scientists can explain the process behind more conventional, lower-temperature superconductivity, they are still trying to work out how the phenomenon can take place at high temperatures in what are essentially 2D materials (cuprates being made up of layers of copper oxide). Such low-dimensional materials are prone to fluctuations that prevent the long-range coherence thought to be essential for superconductivity.

2D Fermi gases can serve as model systems to try and help clear up this mystery, having strong and tuneable correlations between their constituent fermions that can mimic interactions in superconductors. Macroscopic quantum phenomena such as Bose-Einstein condensation involve large numbers of bosons – particles with integer spin – co-existing in a single quantum state. Fermions, in contrast, have half-integer spin and are subject to the Pauli exclusion principle – which precludes multiple particles sharing quantum states. But fermions can get around this restriction by pairing up and combining their spins.

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From a purely scientific frame of reference, many quantum phenomena like non-local correlations between distant entities and wave-particle duality, the wave function collapse and consistent histories, quantum entanglement and teleportation, the uncertainty principle and overall observer-dependence of reality pin down our conscious mind being intrinsic to reality. And this is the one thing the current physicalist paradigm fails to account for. Critical-mass anomalies will ultimately lead to the full paradigm shift in physics. It’s just a matter of time.

With consciousness as primary, everything remains the same and everything changes. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology are unchanged. What changes is our interpretation as to what they are describing. They are not describing the unfolding of an objective physical world, but transdimensional evolution of one’s conscious mind. There’s nothing “physical” about our physical reality except that we perceive it that way. By playing the “Game of Life” we evolved to survive not to see quantum mechanical reality. At our classical level of experiential reality we perceive ourselves as physical, at the quantum level we are a probabilistic wave function, which is pure information.

No matter how you slice it, reality is contextual, the notion that immediately dismisses ‘observer-independent’ interpretations of quantum mechanics and endorses the Mental Universe hypothesis. But we have to be careful here not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. I’d like to make a very important point at this juncture of our discussion: Mental and physical are two sides of the same coin made of information. Both should be viewed as the same substance.

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Keep watching to look at three of the most fantastic quantum breakthroughs that bring liberation and freedom to the world of science today! Subscribe to Futurity for more videos.

#quantum #quantumcomputing #google.

As we advance as a species, there are a lot of things that once seemed impossible a century ago that are now a reality. It’s called evolving. For example, there was a time when most people believed the earth was flat. Then Eratosthenes came onto the scene and proved that the world is round.

At the time, it was groundbreaking. But today, quantum mechanics rules the roost. This school of physics deals with the physical realm on the scale of atoms and electrons; thus making many of the equations in classical mechanics useless. With that being said, let’s take a look at three of the most amazing quantum breakthroughs that are bringing liberation and freedom to the world of science today!

Continue reading “Scientists Just Made A Quantum Computing Breakthrough!!” | >

Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have tapped into a poltergeist-like property of electrons to design devices that can capture excess heat from their environment — and turn it into usable electricity.

The researchers have described their new “optical rectennas” in a paper published today (May 18, 2021) in the journal Nature Communications. These devices, which are too small to see with the naked eye, are roughly 100 times more efficient than similar tools used for energy harvesting. And they achieve that feat through a mysterious process called “resonant tunneling” — in which electrons pass through solid matter without spending any energy.

“They go in like ghosts,” said lead author Amina Belkadi, who recently earned her PhD from the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering (ECEE).

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Photon counting and reliable photon number resolving, until now, only partially available utilizing esoteric EMCCD technology in highly controlled laboratory environments, is now possible with a compact form-factor camera, operating at room temperature — with the additional benefits of higher resolution and speed. “The ability to do photon counting at room temperature is a game changer for our research efforts in Astrophysics and Quantum Information Science,” said Dr. Don Figer, Director of Center for Detectors and the Future Photon Initiative in the College of Science, Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Marilyn Monroe famously sang that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but they are also very popular with quantum scientists—with two new research breakthroughs poised to accelerate the development of synthetic diamond-based quantum technology, improve scalability, and dramatically reduce manufacturing costs.

While silicon is traditionally used for computer and mobile phone hardware, diamond has unique properties that make it particularly useful as a base for emerging quantum technologies such as quantum supercomputers, secure communications and sensors.

However there are two key problems; cost, and difficulty in fabricating the single crystal diamond layer, which is smaller than one millionth of a meter.

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