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Category: quantum physics – Page 218

An international team including researchers from the University of Würzburg has succeeded in creating a special state of superconductivity. This discovery could advance the development of quantum computers.

Superconductors are materials that can conduct electricity without electrical resistance – making them the ideal base material for electronic components in MRI machines, magnetic levitation trains, and even particle accelerators. However, conventional superconductors are easily disturbed by magnetism. An international group of researchers has now succeeded in building a hybrid device consisting of a stable proximitized-superconductor enhanced by magnetism and whose function can be specifically controlled.

They combined the superconductor with a special semiconductor material known as a topological insulator. “Topological insulators are materials that conduct electricity on their surface but not inside. This is due to their unique topological structure, i.e. the special arrangement of the electrons,” explains Professor Charles Gould, a physicist at the Institute for Topological Insulators at the University of Würzburg (JMU). “The exciting thing is that we can equip topological insulators with magnetic atoms so that they can be controlled by a magnet.”

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The 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was focused on quantum dots – objects so tiny, they’re controlled by the strange and complex rules of quantum physics. Many quantum dots used in electronics are made from toxic substances, but their nontoxic counterparts are now being developed and explored for uses in medicine and in the environment. One team of researchers is focusing on carbon-and sulfur-based quantum dots, using them to create safer invisible inks and to help decontaminate water supplies.

The researchers will present their results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Quantum dots are synthetic nanometer-scale semiconductor crystals that emit light. They are used in applications such as electronics displays and solar cells. “Many conventional quantum dots are toxic, because they’re derived from heavy metals,” explains Md Palashuddin Sk, an assistant professor of chemistry at Aligarh Muslim University in India. “So, we’re working on nonmetallic quantum dots because they’re environmentally friendly and can be used in biological applications.”

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A newly developed AI method can calculate a fundamental problem in quantum chemistry: Schrödinger’s Equation. The technique could calculate the ground state of the Schrödinger equation in quantum chemistry.

Predicting molecules’ chemical and physical properties by relying on their atoms’ arrangement in space is the main goal of quantum chemistry. This can be achieved by solving the Schrödinger equation, but in practice, this is extremely difficult.

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Assisted by quantum physics and machine learning, researchers have developed a transparent window coating that lets in visible light but blocks heat-producing UV and infrared. The coating not only reduces room temperature but also the energy consumption related to cooling, regardless of where the sun is in the sky.

Windows are great. They provide views of the park you live across from or the bird-filled tree outside your office. But, windows can also be not-so-great. Letting in light (and the view) is one thing, but with light comes heat, especially in the hotter months.

On hot days, up to 87% of heat gain in our homes is through windows. UV radiation from sunlight passes easily through glass, heating up the room and increasing the likelihood that you need to turn on the air-con or else forgo any light (and, again, that view) by closing the curtains or lowering the blinds. However, researchers at the University of Notre Dame have developed a window coating that blocks heat-producing UV and infrared light while allowing visible light in, reducing both room temperature and cooling energy consumption.

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Microsoft is on the verge of a major quantum computing breakthrough in collaboration with Quantinuum. In a recent announcement, the tech giant indicated that it ran more than 14,000 experiments without encountering a single error.

The company attributes this to Quantinuum’s ion-trap hardware alongside its new qubit-virtualization system. It unlocked this impressive feat because the system allows the team to check logical qubits, thus presenting an opportunity to correct any errors without affecting the progress.

The researchers behind the breakthrough spread the quantum information across groups of connected quantum bits to form logic qubits. Per the report, the team used 30 qubits to make four logical qubits. It was through this process that the team was able to run countless experiments without encountering any errors.

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This experiment, which was published in the journal Nature, opens new avenues for the search for gravitons in laboratory settings.

The graviton, if it exists, is theorized to be massless and capable of traveling at the speed of light, embodying the force of gravity. Yet, its direct observation has eluded scientists until now, if the team’s research holds up. The recent findings stem from an excitation phenomenon discovered in 2019 when Du was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University. This phenomenon led theoretical physicists to speculate about the potential detection of gravitons.

The experiment’s success was the result of an international effort. High-quality semiconductor samples were prepared by researchers at Princeton University, while the experiment itself was conducted in a unique facility built over three years by Du and his team. This facility enabled the team to work at temperatures of minus 273.1 degrees Celsius and capture particle excitations as weak as 10 gigahertz, determining their spin.

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When looking into the future, there are a number of interesting trends, such as quantum computing, which may save lots of energy, or space travel, which is here to stay and will become more affordable. But what I find interesting is the development of computation with biological cells, and the ability to build computing systems, and robots, not from hard metals but from soft biological matter — mostly cells.

Look around you in “nature”- almost everything you see, all plants and animals are built from a single type of structure, a biological cell. They are all alike. Sure, cells vary as they adapt to their environments, but a cellular organism has the same building plan as any other cell. There’s the cell membrane, there is a nucleus, there are organelles and cytoplasm. There is DNA, RNA, amino acids to build proteins and peptides, lipids and sugars. Put together in predictable ways.

We are learning to use these systems to build anything we want from them. We focus on this because our bodies are made from cells, and we want to remain healthy. That is a strong incentive to study these systems. The convergence will happen when we relegate metal-based computing to the sidelines and focus on biological computing as our main systems. These biological cell systems are, incidentally, quantum computing systems. So the trends I mention — here on earth will converge, and only space travel will require the opposite — the need to shield biological computing from conditions in space.

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