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Engineers shrink powerful terahertz systems onto a single semiconductor chip

High-frequency waves classified as terahertz occupy a relatively underused region of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared light and microwaves. Researchers have long recognized their unique potential for applications including ultrafast wireless communication, security screening, remote sensing and medical imaging.

As technologies push toward higher operating frequencies and data rates, photonics-based terahertz systems, which use light at high speed to generate and process terahertz signals, have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional electronic technologies because of their superior bandwidth and power efficiency. However, today’s terahertz optoelectronic systems, which are electronic systems that control light, remain bulky, complex and difficult to scale for widespread use. They typically rely on multiple separate components—including lasers, amplifiers, modulators, sources and detectors—that must be individually made, aligned and interconnected, limiting their use outside specialized laboratory settings.

Now, a UCLA–led research team has demonstrated a way to integrate these functions onto a single semiconductor chip compatible with modern photonic technologies. The breakthrough, published in Nature Communications, paves the way for compact, scalable terahertz systems for next-generation communication, imaging and sensing applications.

Cold radioactive molecules prepped and readied for physics discoveries

For the first time, researchers have developed a way to create chilled molecules containing the radioactive element radium. The resulting laboratory concoctions, generated in part through steps similar to those used to make candy, are poised to help researchers solve one of the biggest mysteries of our universe: How did matter in the early universe come to dominate over its antimatter counterpart?

Early in the universe, matter and antimatter were created in equal proportions. The negative electron, for example, has an antimatter twin called the positron, which is positively charged. An electron and positron can be created from energy in perfect pairs, yet when the two meet, they annihilate each other back into pure energy. Just what happened to all the antimatter remains one of the biggest mysteries in physics. Some kind of difference, or asymmetry, between matter and antimatter must exist to explain why matter was favored during the creation of our universe.

A few years ago, researchers led by Nick Hutzler, professor of physics at Caltech, began investigating radium molecules as a probe for studying this mystery. Their goal is to use lasers to look for subtle changes in the radium molecules that would indicate new particles and forces behind the matter/antimatter mystery. Radium is ideal for these experiments because its nucleus is shaped like a pear.

Hybrid material confirms antiferroelectricity can coexist with switchable polarization

Many of the advanced electronic components surrounding us in everyday life rely on polar materials to function. Polar materials have an uneven distribution of electric charge. This gives them a positive and a negative side even in the absence of an external electric field. The most important among these are ferroelectric materials, in which the direction of polarization can be reversed by applying an electric field.

Researchers are now identifying materials that combine properties previously thought to be mutually exclusive. This could lead to new technological applications.

Scientists create stable ‘boron graphene’ and uncover quantum liquid crystal state

Graphene has long been regarded as one of the most promising materials for future electronics, but its relatively weak electron interactions have limited its potential for applications such as high-temperature superconductivity. Now, researchers from Tohoku University have overcome a major obstacle by creating a stable version of the long-sought “boron graphene” on the surface of a three-dimensional crystal, revealing a new quantum state that could lead to more energy-efficient electronic devices. The findings were published in Science Advances on July 2, 2026.

“We demonstrated a fundamentally new way of creating two-dimensional quantum materials,” says Takafumi Sato of Tohoku University’s Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR). “Rather than attempting to produce an unstable free-standing sheet of boron atoms, we exposed a naturally occurring honeycomb boron layer that already exists within a stable three-dimensional crystal called LaRh3B2.”

For years, scientists have been interested in borophene—a two-dimensional sheet of boron atoms—because its stronger electron interactions could produce exotic quantum phenomena not seen in graphene. However, borophene’s ideal honeycomb structure is extremely unstable, making it almost impossible to manufacture.

Schrödinger‑like charges in six‑molecule clusters point to new quantum components

Researchers from the University of Basel have published details of how electrons within a cluster of molecules interact with one another and can be controlled. Their findings pave the way for new approaches to developing quantum components and electronic circuits on the nanometer scale.

Electronic components are becoming increasingly small—so small, in fact, that quantum phenomena such as the superposition of states play a key role. Understanding this phenomenon is vital for the further development of molecular components and tiny circuits on the nanometer scale.

The behavior of paired electrons within molecules is already well understood. However, for radicals—molecules with an unpaired electron in their outer shell—there were no theoretical models describing interactions between molecules and the associated charge redistribution in small molecule clusters.

A new ‘library’ for Feynman integrals

Theoretical physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have developed a new method of ordering Feynman integrals. This critical step in making theoretical predictions for high-energy precision measurements has posed a major computational bottleneck until now.

Scientists in the research group of Professor Stefan Weinzierl from the PRISMA⁺⁺ Cluster of Excellence propose a solution to this longstanding challenge in new articles published in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D. By ordering the integrals according to their intrinsic geometric properties, they can speed computation times by a factor of about 1,000.

“Feynman integrals are mathematical expressions that researchers must evaluate to make precise predictions,” said Weinzierl. “These are the first pillars for precise predictions for measurements at facilities like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.” The number of these integrals varies from process to process, with some processes needing up to one million.

Scientists achieve all-electrical control of single-molecule quantum states

Quantum technologies promise revolutionary advances in computing, sensing and information processing. However, controlling individual quantum bits (qubits) at the atomic scale remains a major challenge because conventional approaches rely on magnetic fields, which are difficult to confine to a single molecule.

A research team at the Center for Quantum Nanoscience (QNS), led by Director Andreas Heinrich at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), together with collaborators at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), has demonstrated that the quantum state of an individual magnetic molecule can instead be controlled electrically using a newly identified exchange-mediated mechanism. The study published in Nature Physics provides a new strategy for electrically controlling molecular quantum systems and could help pave the way for more scalable quantum technologies.

Magnetic molecules are considered attractive building blocks for future quantum technologies because they are only a few nanometers in size, can self-assemble into ordered structures and can be chemically tailored to possess desired quantum properties. These characteristics make them promising candidates for molecular quantum computing, quantum sensing and spintronic applications.

New computational imaging method cuts X-ray dose while preserving high resolution

Researchers have shown that it’s possible to take clear, high-resolution X-ray images using very little radiation. With more development, the new approach could eventually make medical X-ray diagnostics less risky and more accessible.

“While traditional X-ray imaging relies on enough X-ray photons reaching a detector to form a clear image, our approach uses computational techniques to reconstruct an image from fewer photons,” said research team leader Tiqiao Xiao from the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences. “We were able to show the low-dose potential of this approach by achieving megapixel radiology with ultra-low-light.”

In Optica, the researchers demonstrate X-ray ghost images with nearly 2-megapixel resolution using only 0.48% of the X-ray photons typically required for X-ray imaging. The proof-of-concept study suggests that comparable X-ray image quality may eventually be achievable with far lower radiation doses than are used today.

Braided, exotic particles could build reliable, universal quantum computers

A truly useful quantum computer must be able to run any algorithm, with the same versatility an ordinary laptop offers. Physicists have now shown a new way to give a quantum computer exactly that flexibility, harnessing the capabilities of exotic quantum particles called non-Abelian anyons.

A team of scientists from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), Harvard, Stony Brook University and Quantinuum built and tested a complete toolkit of operations using non-Abelian anyons, proving for the first time the broad utility of this approach.

“We demonstrated a so-called universal gate set—meaning that if you store information in these emergent versions of quarks, and you move them around, you can do any quantum computation you might want to do,” said Ruben Verresen, assistant professor of molecular engineering at UChicago PME and a co-author of the new study published in Nature.

How ions flow like a liquid through a solid crystal

A research team led by the University of Osaka, working with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), RIKEN and the Institute of Science Tokyo, has uncovered a fundamental mechanism behind superionic conduction, in which ions move rapidly through a solid while its crystalline framework remains intact.

Using a simple physical model, the researchers connected “sublattice melting” with cooperative and spatially heterogeneous ion transport. The findings offer a unified explanation for superionic conduction and could help guide the design of next-generation solid-state batteries.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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