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New benchmark puts quantum computers to the test and reveals their limitations

Quantum computers are no longer theoretical concepts. Today, they are being developed to tackle a range of complex problems, including exploring financial risk, modeling complex molecules and optimizing massive logistics networks. However, until now, there has been no way to benchmark the computational power of different systems on the same scale to see how they compare.

A team led by Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. has devised a universal testing standard that provides an apples-to-apples performance measure. They put Google, IBM and Quantinuum hardware through the benchmark and not only found significant gaps between them but also discovered that current systems were still miles away from solving real-world problems.

The team calls its test Quantum Universal Operation Performance System, or QUOPS for short. It is designed to measure the size of the largest computationally relevant quantum circuits a quantum computer can successfully run, as well as the speed at which it can complete those operations.

A finely tuned mess—how disorder can make networks more stable

Perfection is overrated—at least when it comes to complex systems like the power grid, food webs and advanced materials. For decades, scientists generally assumed that networks function most reliably when their individual components are as similar as possible. But real-world networks are rarely uniform.

Generators in a power grid, neurons in a brain, animals in a food web and components in a material all differ in ways that scientists traditionally treated as imperfections.

Now, Northwestern University physicists are overturning that long-held assumption.

Ubiquitin marks abnormal glycogen for destruction to protect the brain, study finds

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology have discovered a previously unknown cellular defense system that protects the brain from abnormal glycogen accumulation, which is linked to severe neurological disorders.

In a study published this week in Nature, Professor Felix Randow and colleagues showed that a protein called RNF213 plays a key role in identifying abnormal glycogen. RNF213 attaches a small molecular tag called ubiquitin directly to defective glycogen molecules. This tag acts like a “dispose of this” signal, triggering a cellular recycling process known as autophagy to sweep away and break down the damaged energy stores.

Glycogen is the main form in which cells store glucose for energy. Its complex, highly branched structure keeps it soluble while allowing cells to rapidly mobilize glucose when energy is needed. When cells assemble glycogen incorrectly, or when quality-control mechanisms fail, the sugar becomes poorly branched and settles into dense, insoluble clumps called polyglucosan bodies. Over time, these toxic deposits accumulate inside brain cells, causing irreversible tissue damage.

A new bridge for quantum networks: Physicists convert microwaves to light using 2D magnets

Physicists at The City College of New York have demonstrated a new way to transfer microwave signals onto light using magnetic waves inside a layered semiconductor. The work establishes a materials platform for building interfaces that could one day link quantum computers through optical networks. The research, titled “Microwave-to-optical transduction using magnon–exciton coupling,” was led by the Laboratory for Nano and Micro Photonics (LaNMP) at CCNY, headed by physics professor Vinod M. Menon. It appears in the journal Nature Materials.

Many of today’s leading quantum processors use microwave signals, while light is far better suited to carrying information over long distances through optical fiber. Linking the two requires a transducer: a device that converts a signal from one frequency range to another while preserving the information it carries.

The team turned to chromium sulfide bromide (CrSBr), a layered magnetic semiconductor. When driven by microwaves, the atomic magnetic moments in the crystal move collectively, producing waves known as magnons. These waves shift the energies of excitons, bound pairs of electrons and holes that interact strongly with light. As a result, laser light reflected from the crystal picks up a coherent optical signal that tracks the microwave drive. The approach takes advantage of the especially strong interaction between light and matter near exciton resonances.

Decoding the DNA switches behind gene regulation

Understanding gene regulation may be key to interpreting human disease genetics. Genes are regulated in part by stretches of DNA called enhancers, which define when, where and how strongly each gene is turned on. Mapping enhancers and how they function in specific cell types is necessary for understanding gene regulation and disease-related genetic variants. But the location and activity of enhancers are highly cell type-specific, making it difficult to accurately predict enhancer–gene interactions.

In recent years, researchers have developed several computational models to predict enhancer–gene regulatory interactions using measurements of chromatin state and three-dimensional contacts.

These models have produced enhancer–gene maps spanning hundreds of cells and tissues. However, these methods remain limited, and confirming their accuracy is difficult because the necessary experiments have been done in only a handful of cell types.

Disorder is key to tuning a high-temperature superconductor

Cornell physicists have discovered that minimizing disorder, not varying electron count, is the key factor for controlling superconductivity in the unique material iron selenide (FeSe), a new insight for understanding high-temperature superconductors.

Using a new technique to control this iron-based superconductor, researchers in Kyle Shen’s lab have found that iron selenide’s superconducting “dome”—the curve tracing how superconductivity strengthens and then weakens as the properties are tuned—is more closely linked to resistance caused by imperfections in its crystal lattice than to the number of electrons flowing through the crystal. Iron selenide could be fundamentally different from other high-temperature (or unconventional) superconductors, the finding suggests.

“We found that in this material, that dome is driven by factors much different than what you see normally,” said postdoctoral researcher Paul Malinowski, a former Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). “It’s not driven by how many electrons you’re adding in, but rather, it’s driven by the obstacles the electrons are hitting—how perfect or imperfect is the crystal lattice?”

Chemists overturn 40-year assumption about a key class of superconductors

Scientists at Warwick have shown that a material treated for 40 years as a uniform, textbook superconductor is in fact a patchwork of different crystal structures throughout its bulk, using an advanced 3D imaging technique to see deep inside the crystal for the first time.

High-temperature superconductivity is widely regarded as one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the past 40 years. It promises technologies built on electricity that flows with zero resistance and magnets far more powerful than anything possible today, and it underpins research into future power grids, medical scanners and quantum computers.

The study, published in Physical Review Letters and led by researchers in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick working with the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in France, looked inside a type of superconductor called a cuprate, a copper-based material that can carry electricity with no resistance at unusually high, though still very cold, temperatures.

Close-up images show defects locking electrons into stable Wigner solids

A team of researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) developed an approach that enabled them to directly observe how electrons interact with defects in advanced semiconductor devices in unprecedented detail. The team’s methodology included an innovative simulation tool that enabled accurate theoretical interpretations of its experimental observations.

The study, published in Nature, focuses on cutting-edge ultrathin devices known as two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors that have unusual electron states.

“Our study yielded valuable insights into why electrons in 2D semiconductors behave the way they do,” said Mike Crommie, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and professor of physics at UC Berkeley, and one of the study’s authors.

Using sound waves to turn iron and water into magnetic nanoparticles

Iron rusts on its own, slowly, over months or years. Now, researchers at Tohoku University have found a way to compress the process of metal reacting with water to form oxide, taking mere hours and using nothing more than ultrasound. Details were published in the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry.

Spinel-type iron oxide nanoparticles are widely used in magnetic materials, adsorbents, catalysts, magnetic separation and biomedical research. Conventional synthesis methods typically start with soluble iron salts, which are then converted into particles using chemicals such as ammonia or sodium hydroxide.

The Tohoku University team took a different approach, generating the nanoparticles directly from iron powder and water activated by ultrasound.

What kills Schrödinger’s cat? Underground experiment rules out gravity model for quantum decoherence

Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives rise to thought-experiment oddities like Schrödinger’s famous dead-and-alive cat. The process by which quantum phenomena like superposition—the paradoxical affliction of Schrödinger’s cat—fade into the classical reality we experience is known as decoherence.

Now, a new experiment has narrowed the field of possible explanations for decoherence, in particular ruling out a prominent theory linking gravity to the process. The results appeared in a paper in the New Journal of Physics in June 2026.

“One of the deepest questions in modern physics is why the strange quantum behavior that governs atoms and elementary particles seems to disappear in the macroscopic world we experience every day,” says FQxI member Catalina Curceanu, director of research and spokesperson for the VIP Collaboration at the National Laboratory of Frascati of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN-LNF) in Italy.

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