URL: Quantum Physics

Quantum Physics News

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

• Krypton gas emerges as a new ingredient for quantum computing
  To commercialize quantum computing, manufacturers need high-quality superconducting materials for microchips, but they also require a reliable, sustainable nanofabrication process. Tantalum is a corrosion-resistant metal that meets the first criterion but not the second. That's because it has to be deposited on a substrate at temperatures that typically exceed 400°C (752°F)—too hot for many semiconductor foundries' current tools.
  
• New photonic crystal method improves single-photon sources for quantum networks
  Quantum communication promises many advantages over today's standard technologies, including absolutely secure transmission of large amounts of data. However, it requires single photons—and generating them is very difficult. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST) have developed a new method that overcomes the problems of previous approaches.
  
• The global race to make a practical quantum computer just took a big leap forward
  In the global race to build bigger and better quantum computers, researchers have taken a step forward. A new machine called Helios is radically different from other quantum computers.
  
• Physicists entangle quantum memories across a record-breaking 420 km
  Optical fibers are already the backbone of global communication systems. Recently, however, physicists have started to explore how their functionality could be boosted further by conveying information via entangled quantum particles—potentially enabling instantaneous exchanges of information across vast distances. Such a system could eventually be the basis of a future 'quantum internet,' offering a level of security and computing power beyond anything possible today.
  
• A new approach to building noise-resistant quantum sensors
  Quantum sensors, devices that collect measurements by exploiting quantum-mechanical phenomena, could potentially detect extremely weak magnetic, gravitational and electromagnetic signals with greater sensitivity than classical sensors. Some quantum sensors leverage entanglement, a phenomenon that prompts distant particles to become so strongly linked that the physical state of one particle dictates the state of the others.
  

Monday, August 17, 2026

• Quantum light engine links atom-photon thermodynamics to classical physics
  What is heat, and what is useful work if a machine consists only of an atom and light particles? In modern quantum technologies, this kind of question connects thermodynamics with quantum physics. Researchers at the University of Basel, Switzerland, have developed a theoretical approach that can reconcile both theories.
  
• Three photons at once beat the standard photon test
  Physicists at the University of Twente have improved the standard test for the quality of individual particles of light. By letting three photons interfere at the same time instead of two, they draw more information from every measurement. Their experiment outperforms even a perfect, noise-free run of the old method. The work appeared in Physical Review Letters.
  
• Gluons may play a central role in baryon number conservation—and matter's stability
  New results from the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) suggest that gluons, the glue-like particles that hold quarks together inside protons, play a central role in the conservation of baryon number—an essential part of a particle's quantum identity.
  
• Physicists predict a new form of quantum matter that holds itself together
  Researchers at Monash University have predicted a new type of quantum matter that challenges decades of thinking about how ultracold particles behave. The paper, "Quantum droplets in a resonant Bose-Fermi mixture," is published in Physical Review Letters.
  
• Graphene device measures fractional electric charges carried by some of quantum physics' strangest objects
  An electron is supposed to be indivisible. It carries one fundamental unit of electric charge, and every electron is exactly the same. But under extreme conditions, large numbers of electrons act together and give rise to new quantum objects called quasiparticles. These act as if they carry only a fraction of an electron's charge, making them one of the strangest phenomena in modern physics.
  
• Anomalous quantum oscillations reveal new physics in a topological insulator
  A study has been published in Nature Communications that identifies an unusual regime of quantum oscillations in a three-dimensional topological insulator. The results show that, when subjected to temperatures near absolute zero and extreme magnetic fields, electrons in the material zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe₅) exhibit behavior that deviates from the pattern predicted by conventional theory.
  

Sunday, August 16, 2026

• Strain flips Hall signal in altermagnetic manganese telluride, suggesting a path to practical spintronics
  Time-reversal symmetry is an exotic behavior found in systems whose internal physics looks different when running forward versus backward in time. For some time, physicists have searched for this behavior in systems with almost no overall magnetization. Such phases are highly prized for spintronics, where information is carried using the quantum spins of electrons.
  

Thursday, August 13, 2026

• Uniaxial strain reveals new way to tune electron flow in altermagnet material
  Altermagnetism is a new, third type of magnetism of great interest for spin-transport applications like computer memory. If properly harnessed, it could combine the benefits of the two existing types of magnetism, ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism, ultimately reducing or eliminating heat during information transfer and increasing the ability to miniaturize next-generation technologies. Rice University's Pengcheng Dai recently published a paper in Physical Review X describing the first successful efforts to put a proposed altermagnetic material into a single magnetic-domain state, allowing the research team to characterize the material's intrinsic magnetic structure.
  

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

• Spontaneous magnons synchronize with external signals at room temperature
  Signals ride on waves of one kind or another: light, sound, radio. But new carriers are needed to relay information in next-generation devices. Disturbances or waves in magnetic materials called magnons could be an efficient option—if scientists can tame them.
  
• Quantum advantage reassessed: More realistic benchmarks for quantum algorithms
  Quantum advantage refers to the point at which a quantum computer solves a clearly defined task faster or more efficiently than any classical computer—or makes it solvable in the first place. For many practical applications, this has not yet been demonstrated. Research therefore relies heavily on theoretical models and simulations to explore where and under what conditions such an advantage may realistically be achieved in the future.
  
• Long-sought Zhang-Rice singlet visualized directly in cuprate superconductor
  Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with zero electrical resistance below specific temperatures. Most of these materials become superconducting at very low temperatures, but some also exhibit superconductivity at higher temperatures.
  

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

• New CERN measurement challenges conventional models of how gluons behave inside atomic nuclei
  A University of Kansas physicist played a leading role in a CERN study showing that two rival explanations for how gluons behave inside atomic nuclei can now be experimentally distinguished.
  
• X-rays: Beyond the Nobel Prize limit
  When certain atoms are irradiated with laser light, they can produce a very different kind of laser light: laser pulses with extremely high frequencies in the X-ray range. These laser pulses, which helped achieve record-breaking results at TU Wien in the 1990s, were the subject of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics.
  
• New optical method reveals internal dynamics of elusive Wigner crystals
  Researchers at the University of Basel and the Technical University of Munich have developed a new method to reveal the collective motion of electrons in one of the most elusive states of matter: the Wigner crystal. Using light, the physicists were able to uncover previously inaccessible properties of this fragile quantum state.
  

Monday, August 10, 2026

• Quantum heat circuits learn electronics' oldest trick: Sharing a power supply
  Every electronic and optoelectronic device generates heat, and today that heat is managed almost entirely from the outside. Heatsinks, fans, cold plates and refrigerators are bulky exterior measures bolted onto a chip or package after the fact. They treat heat as a single averaged quantity to be removed in bulk, even though the heat is actually produced locally, component by component, deep inside the circuitry.
  
• Discovery of 'slow' electrons in 2D material could lead to new memory device
  Over the last decade, researchers have developed two-dimensional materials with fascinating quantum effects that could be harnessed for next-generation technologies.
  

Friday, August 7, 2026

• New 'shape-shifting' architecture brings versatility to photonic quantum computing
  Using light to process quantum information is one of the most promising approaches to building future quantum computers. Light particles, known as photons, are excellent carriers of quantum information, but their lack of natural interactions has created a major challenge for researchers seeking to build systems capable of performing a full range of computations.
  
• Crossing into a mirror world: Particles turn to wisps of fog, and the magnetic monopole paradox dissolves
  In Goethe's ballad "Erlkönig," immortalized in Schubert's fevered 1815 setting, a dying boy riding through the night sees a spectral king beckoning from the darkness. His father calms him: "Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif"—my son, it is only a wisp of fog. In the poem, the father's reassurance proves tragically wrong. In the quantum world, however, his words acquire an uncanny new meaning.
  
• Physicists watch a material's electrons assemble, and reassemble, into coexisting phases
  A tall glass of ice water isn't just a thirst quencher; it's also an everyday example of coexisting phases. Water can exist simultaneously in both liquid and solid phases. As it turns out, this phase duality can also exist in more exotic quantum materials, in ways that are far more complicated to tease apart.
  

Thursday, August 6, 2026

• New quantum microscopy trick quadruples microscope resolution
  Three years after a team of Caltech scientists showed that pairs of entangled photons could double the resolution of a light microscope, the same lab has figured out a way to double down on that improvement. They have now achieved a fourfold resolution boost compared to a classical microscope, using a new optical design that sends one of the entangled photons through the microscope's optics three times rather than just once.
  
• X(2370) emerges as glueball-dominated particle in collider experiments
  At the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Brazil, the BESIII Collaboration report that, after 15 years of sustained research, it identified the dominant constituent of the X(2370) as a pseudoscalar glueball with spin-parity quantum numbers of 0⁻⁺.
  
• Two-qubit entangling gate flags its own errors as detectable photon losses
  Quantum errors are a normal part of quantum computing because fragile physical qubits (the tiny components storing data) can easily break down because of environmental noise, like heat, stray signals or microscopic vibrations. Typical fixes involve vast amounts of extra hardware qubits, which make computers larger, more expensive and harder to build.
  
• Sunlight-powered setup generates quantum entanglement
  Today's quantum technologies rely on energy-intensive lasers, raising concerns that scaling them up could further increase energy demands. In new work, researchers have demonstrated that quantum entanglement between photons can be generated directly from sunlight, offering a potential alternative.
  

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

• Miniaturized laser technology paves the way for fundamental physics experiments in space
  An international team of researchers has succeeded in producing atomic quantum gas mixtures with an unprecedented particle flux. In the journal Nature Communications, the scientists report on experiments conducted with the MAIUS-B apparatus, in which Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) consisting of two different atomic species—rubidium and potassium—were generated and studied under microgravity conditions in the Einstein Elevator at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany.
  
• Air-stable, ultrathin superconductors developed for more scalable quantum devices
  Super-thin superconducting materials, which are only one or a few atoms thick, have unique properties scientists can leverage to produce more compact, scalable, and efficient quantum devices. But these fragile materials degrade so rapidly in air that they are difficult to study or manufacture.