Cold atom experiments are among the most powerful and precise ways of investigating and measuring the universe and exploring the quantum world. By trapping atoms and exploiting their quantum properties, scientists can discover new states of matter, sense even the faintest of signals, take ultra-precise measurements of time and gravity, and conduct quantum sensing and computing experiments.
Amid high expectations for quantum technology, a new paper in Science reports a proven quantum advantage. In an experiment, entangled light has allowed researchers to learn a system’s noise with very few measurements.
Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and international partners have demonstrated that entangled light can cut the number of measurements needed to learn the behavior of a complex, noisy quantum system by an enormous factor.
“This is the first proven quantum advantage for a photonic system,” says corresponding author Ulrik Lund Andersen, a professor at DTU Physics. “Knowing that such an advantage is possible with a straightforward optical setup should help others look for areas where this approach would pay off, such as sensing and machine learning.”
Researchers have developed a chip-based quantum random number generator that provides high-speed, high-quality operation on a miniaturized platform. This advance could help move quantum random number generators closer to being built directly into everyday devices, where they could strengthen security without sacrificing speed.
In a world-first, researchers from the Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have directly observed the evolution of the elusive dark excitons in atomically thin materials, laying the foundation for new breakthroughs in both classical and quantum information technologies.
Their findings have been published in Nature Communications.
Professor Keshav Dani, head of the unit, says, Dark excitons have great potential as information carriers, because they are inherently less likely to interact with light, and hence less prone to degradation of their quantum properties. However, this invisibility also makes them very challenging to study and manipulate.
A lot of the science from our accelerators is published long after collisions end, so storing experimental data for future physicists is crucial.
About a billion pairs of particles collide every second within the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). With them, a petabyte of collision data floods the detectors and pours through highly selective filters, known as trigger systems. Less than 0.001% of the data survives the process and reaches the CERN Data Center, to be copied onto long-term tape.
This archive now represents the largest scientific data set ever assembled. Yet, there may be more science in it than we can extract today, which makes data preservation essential for future physicists.
Why do glass and other amorphous materials deform more easily in some regions than in others? A research team from the University of Osaka, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Okayama University, and the University of Tokyo has uncovered the answer.
By applying a mathematical method known as persistent homology, the team demonstrated that these soft regions are governed by hidden hierarchical structures, where ordered and disordered atomic arrangements coexist.
Crystalline solids, such as salt or ice, have atoms neatly arranged in repeating patterns. Amorphous materials, including glass, rubber, and certain plastics, lack this long-range order. However, they are not completely random: they possess medium-range order (MRO), subtle atomic patterns that extend over a few nanometers.
For almost a century, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has stood as one of the defining ideas of quantum physics: a particle’s position and momentum cannot be known at the same time with absolute precision. The more you know about one, the less you know about the other.
In a new study published in Science Advances, our team demonstrates how to work around this restriction, not by breaking physics but by reshaping uncertainty itself.
The result is a breakthrough in the science of measurement that could power a new generation of ultra-precise quantum sensors operating at the scale of atoms.
Recently, the research groups led by Prof. Zhang Qingli and Prof. Jiang Haihe from Hefei institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have jointly developed a high-symmetry gradient-doped Nd:YAG laser crystal designed for dual-end pumping configurations. This innovation significantly mitigates thermal effects and enhances laser performance.