Long, C., Huang, M., Ye, X. et al. Hybrid quantum-classical-quantum convolutional neural networks. Sci Rep 15, 31,780 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-13417-1
A research team affiliated with UNIST has successfully demonstrated the experimental creation of collective quantum entanglement rooted in dark states—previously confined to theoretical models. The findings are published online in Nature Communications.
Unlike bright states, dark states are highly resistant to external disturbances and exhibit remarkably extended lifetimes, making them promising candidates for next-generation quantum technologies such as quantum memory and ultra-sensitive sensors.
Led by Professor Je-Hyung Kim in the Department of Physics at UNIST, in collaboration with Dr. Changhyoup Lee from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) and Dr. Jin Dong Song from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), the team has achieved the controlled induction of dark state-based collective entanglement. Remarkably, this entanglement exhibits a lifetime approximately 600 times longer than that of conventional bright states.
In 1951, physicist Julian Schwinger theorized that by applying a uniform electrical field to a vacuum, electron-positron pairs would be spontaneously created out of nothing, through a phenomenon called quantum tunneling.
The problem with turning the matter-out-of-nowhere theory into Star Trek replicators or transporters? Enormously high electric fields would be required—far beyond the limits of any direct physical experiments.
As a result, the aptly-named Schwinger effect has never been seen.
For several decades, a central puzzle in quantum physics has remained unsolved: Could electrons behave like a perfect, frictionless fluid with electrical properties described by a universal quantum number?
This unique property of electrons has been extremely difficult to detect in any material so far because of the presence of atomic defects, impurities, and imperfections in the material.
Researchers at the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), along with collaborators from the National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, have now finally detected this quantum fluid of electrons in graphene—a material consisting of a single sheet of pure carbon atoms.
