{"id":247007,"date":"2026-11-10T06:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T12:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/atomic-defects-leave-telltale-optical-fingerprints-in-quantum-material"},"modified":"2026-11-10T06:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T12:47:11","slug":"atomic-defects-leave-telltale-optical-fingerprints-in-quantum-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/atomic-defects-leave-telltale-optical-fingerprints-in-quantum-material","title":{"rendered":"Atomic defects leave telltale optical fingerprints in quantum material"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The tiny atomic defects so important for future quantum technologies can be difficult to spot. Fortunately, they leave behind some clues. The defects can alter how a material responds to light, producing a distinctive optical fingerprint that scientists can measure. The challenge is figuring out which fingerprints belong to which defects.<\/p>\n<p>To that end, a University at Buffalo\u2013led team has predicted the optical fingerprints of known atomic defects in hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), a material with a honeycomb-like pattern of boron and nitrogen atoms. The team\u2019s computer models simulated how different defects affect the intensity and polarization of the light produced when h-BN is hit with a laser.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/nalefd\/article\/doi\/10.1021\/acs.nanolett.6c03684\/5453587\/Nonlinear-Optical-Fingerprints-of-Defects-in\" target=\"_blank\">Published<\/a> in <i>Nano Letters<\/i>, these calculations could eventually help scientists distinguish between different types of defects in h-BN and determine which could be useful for emerging quantum technologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tiny atomic defects so important for future quantum technologies can be difficult to spot. Fortunately, they leave behind some clues. The defects can alter how a material responds to light, producing a distinctive optical fingerprint that scientists can measure. The challenge is figuring out which fingerprints belong to which defects. To that end, a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}