Researchers developed a magnetically controlled microbot system that can precisely steer quantum sensors inside living cells.
Category: quantum physics – Page 9
Teleportation is no longer just science fiction—at the quantum level
(Science fiction’s “warp drive” is speeding closer to reality.)
Inspired by science fiction, they landed on “quantum teleportation.” Since then, the idea has gone from theoretical concept to an experimentally verified reality. The first experiments in the late 1990s showed that quantum states could be transmitted across short distances, while subsequent research proved it works across increasingly longer distances—even to and from low Earth orbit, as Chinese scientists demonstrated in 2017. They’ve achieved quantum teleportation by taking advantage of quantum entanglement, a natural phenomenon in which tiny particles can become linked with each other across infinite distances.
Quantum teleportation is very different from the teleportation of matter we see in fiction. It involves transferring a quantum state without moving any matter. And while experts say it won’t lead to Star Trek-esque beaming, it could help bring about a new era of computing that revolutionizes our understanding of the subatomic world—and by extension, of the nature of the universe and everything within it.
Is Spacetime Fundamental, or is it Emergent? With Brian Cox
In this conversation, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice are joined by physicist Brian Cox to explore one of the deepest open questions in modern physics: whether space and time are fundamental—or emergent.
The discussion spans emergent spacetime, quantum entanglement, black holes, wormholes, and the black hole information paradox, including ideas like ER = EPR, causality protection, and whether information is ever truly destroyed. The core idea centers on the possibility that spacetime itself emerges from deeper quantum information structures, challenging our intuitive understanding of reality.
From ‘Are We The Universe’s Way of Knowing Itself? With Brian Cox’: • Are We The Universe’s Way of Knowing Itsel…
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Corralling Interfering Anyons
Link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/Physics.19.
A delicate interference experiment elucidates the collective behavior of quasiparticles that are neither bosons nor fermions, but something in between.
When you live in theory-land, as I do, anyons in fractional quantum Hall (FQH) systems are an emblem of elegance. They address a fundamental question in quantum mechanics—the classification of indistinguishable particles—by breaking the long-rooted dichotomy between fermions and bosons and replacing it with a continuum of possibilities. Their implications are far reaching. Anyons account for the “hierarchy” of FQH states and they inspire visions of topologically protected quantum computation [1]. In experiment-land, the most direct manifestation of anyons is the phase that the system’s wave function acquires when two anyons are interchanged or when one winds around another. This phase is at the heart of a new experiment performed by Noah Samuelson and Andrea Young of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and their collaborators [2].
Electric current stabilizes spins at unstable points for new types of computing
A research team has discovered a new way to control tiny magnetic properties inside materials using electric current, which could possibly pave the way for new types of computing technologies. The work is based on spintronics, a field that uses not only the electric charge of electrons but also their “spin,” a quantum property that can be thought of as a tiny magnet.
Spintronics is already used in magnetic random access memory (MRAM), a type of memory that keeps data even when the power is turned off. This is different from conventional memory, which loses information without electricity.
In MRAM, data is stored depending on whether spins point “up” or “down.” These two stable states are separated by an energy barrier, which helps keep the data secure. However, this stability also makes it harder to switch between states, requiring strong electric currents.
First quantum oscillations observed in gallium nitride holes
Gallium nitride, a semiconductor that can operate at high voltages, temperatures, and frequencies, has enabled technologies from LED lighting to high-power electronics. Now Cornell researchers have observed a quantum property of the material for the first time, an advance that could expand its technological reach.
Much of gallium nitride’s value as a semiconductor lies in how quickly negatively charged electrons move through the material. But the material could become even more useful if scientists better understood its positively charged “holes,” which behave like mobile pockets of missing electrons but have been difficult to study.
Understanding how to control the flow of the holes—as engineers have achieved in silicon semiconductors—would allow gallium nitride to reach its full potential.
Physicists find electronic agents that govern flat band quantum materials
Physicists have directly visualized the fundamental electronic building blocks of flat-band quantum materials, a class of systems in which electron motion is effectively quenched and strong interactions give rise to emergent phases of matter. In a study published in Nature Physics, Qimiao Si’s group at Rice University, in collaboration with researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, identified compact molecular orbitals that act as the key electronic agents governing the exotic behavior of these materials.
“In flat band materials, electron motion experiences destructive interference,” said Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy and director of Rice’s Extreme Quantum Materials Alliance.
These flat band materials are also topological with properties that are preserved as the material continuously bends or stretches in any symmetry-preserving way.