Quantum Physics

Scientists recreated a particle-forming process linked to the extreme physics of the early universe using a 13-ion quantum simulator. The breakthrough suggests quantum computers could eventually help researchers investigate how matter formed and evolved after the Big Bang.

Quantum photonics could be a pivotal part of future quantum technology if the right materials can be created, a new review paper has found.

We are continuously sending information to each other, transmitting zeros and ones through a giant network of connected computers and devices. Scientists are now trying to extend this familiar concept of the internet to the quantum realm, looking for an efficient way to exchange quantum rather than classical information: qubits instead of bits. The motivation is not just scientific curiosity. Qubits can be a 0, a 1 or any superposition of the two. They can also become entangled, showing a degree of correlation that is out of reach for classical bits.

Researchers have shown that exotic quantum particles called non-Abelian anyons can perform the full range of operations needed for universal quantum computing. Using 54 qubits on Quantinuum’s H2 processor, they combined braiding and fusion to unlock capabilities that braiding alone could not provide.

An electron's charge is normally fixed, like a coin you can't break into pieces. But if electrons are cooled close to absolute zero and trapped in a two-dimensional layer under a powerful magnetic field, they organize into a collective state of "quasiparticles" that seem to hold only a fraction of an electron's charge.

Classical computers can temporarily store the information required to perform specific tasks in a short-term memory component known as RAM (random access memory). This component allows computer processors to retrieve information from a chosen location without searching through all stored data.

Photonic Inc. and Microsoft have collaborated to advance quantum resource estimation for future large-scale quantum computing systems. As quantum computing scales beyond a single processor, developers and enterprises need better ways to understand the value and benefits associated with distributed architectures, and advanced error-correction approaches. The companies are working together to help the ecosystem better estimate the resources required to run quantum algorithms, including qubit counts, run time, and overall system overhead. The collaboration builds on the companies’ existing strategic partnership, combining Photonic’s expertise in next generation error correction codes and distributed quantum computing with...

Foundational postulates of the path-integral formulation observed in the lab The post Single photon measurements confirm Richard Feynman’s vision of quantum mechanics appeared first on Physics World.

A simplified cosmological model suggests that decoherence can suppress quantum tunneling, effectively locking fields into the vacuum state they have reached.

Quantum materials do things ordinary materials cannot. They carry current without any loss, or conduct only along their outer edge while the inside insulates. Future quantum computers and quantum sensors will run on materials like these. To improve them, researchers need to see exactly where currents and magnetic fields run at the nanoscale.

Selecting profitable investments from an increasingly large and constrained pool of assets could become more effective with a hybrid quantum-classical method, according to research in the International Journal of Information and Communication Technology. The work could help solve a major computational problem in modern portfolio management.

Twistronics has become a new alchemy of materials. By choosing atomically thin layers, stacking them and changing their relative angle, researchers can create electronic behavior absent from the original ingredients. Twisted graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides have already yielded superconductivity and fractional Chern insulators, states with fractionally charged excitations. One of physics' most active frontiers now has a moonshot ambition: to design entirely new forms of quantum matter.

As a star nears the end of its life, it faces two very different fates: It can explode as a supernova, leaving behind a neutron star, or collapse and become a black hole. What determines the outcome remains one of astrophysics' great unanswered questions.

Japan's new quantum system, Shunkai, uses "optical tweezers" to trap and rearrange atoms, and will be available to researchers working on quantum error correction.

A cryostat that can reach temperatures of 4 K and warm back up again within just two hours offers an efficient solution for testing the electronic components needed to build quantum computers The post Faster cryogenics speeds up quantum testing appeared first on Physics World.

Scientists have shown that the two exponents (inelastic scattering exponent and dephasing exponent) commonly used to describe electron scattering in graphene do not necessarily follow the same behavior. Using gated epitaxial graphene, a multi-institutional team of researchers independently extracted the two exponents through current-heating measurements and weak-localization analysis. The contrasting gate-voltage dependence provides evidence that energy relaxation and loss of quantum phase coherence can be governed by different microscopic processes.

A team from SUNY Polytechnic Institute has designed a quantum rule-based simulator known as Quantum Tic-Tac-Toe. The simulator was originally designed to help students learn abstract concepts in quantum mechanics without using matrix algebra, in a game-like environment. It has rules similar to classical tic-tac-toe but incorporates phenomena from quantum mechanics, such as wavefunction collapse, quantum entanglement and quantum superposition. These concepts are also cornerstones of how quantum computers operate.

Scientists have a history of trying — and failing — to link biology and quantum mechanics. The real connection between them may be in the math. The post Biology Might Not Be Quantum, but Its Math Is Quantumlike first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A research team led by faculty at the Duke Quantum Center (DQC) has observed string-breaking dynamics related to particle-antiparticle formation on a quantum simulator, among the first such observations in quantum physics.

Physicists searching through Large Hadron Collider data found no evidence that the machine has been producing microscopic quantum black holes, but the result sharply narrows where such exotic physics could still be hiding. These hypothetical black holes could form if extra spatial dimensions make gravity much stronger at extremely tiny scales, potentially offering clues toward the long-sought theory of quantum gravity.

A team led by University at Buffalo physicists has found a mathematical solution that shows how a frustrated quantum magnet can transition from ultraslow behavior to ultrafast, highly entangled behavior resembling that of a black hole.

Just as a leaf drifts along with a stream, objects in other moving fluids normally drift along with the flow. That is, unless they exert energy to move against it. Although it may be less intuitive, light waves or photons work similarly. To move against a stream of light, an object or particle, like a photon, must either have an external force acting on it or actively use energy to move upstream.

Engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have designed a new type of quantum nanostructure that could enable optical neural networks. This emerging technology has the potential to make artificial intelligence systems, like large language models and image generation, faster and significantly more energy efficient.

Stanford researchers have recorded the first real-time quantum jumps of sound, watching single phonons abruptly vanish from one energy state to another. The breakthrough could open new paths for quantum computing, error correction, highly sensitive biological sensors, and next-generation sound-based devices.

Reliably verifying the location of a device connected to the internet or other networks is important for various real-world applications. For instance, it could be valuable for authorizing financial transactions, securing communications and controlling who can access specific databases or services.

Physical qubit counts used to dominate quantum-computing announcements. They still matter, but they do not show whether a

Channing Tatum denies running an Instagram account that sparked speculation involving ex-fiancée Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles

A perspective in Next Nanotechnology examines how integrating quantum biosensors with microfluidic organ-on-a-chip platforms could enable continuous, high-resolution monitoring of electrophysiology, metabolism, and local tissue conditions. The approach could extend measurements from the millimeter to the nanoscale, but challenges in optical and microwave integration, thermal control, fabrication, and signal processing remain.

Researchers in China have extended the lifetime of entanglement in a room-temperature, solid-state system by up to a factor of 240. Led by Shuo Ren and Rui-Jian Liang at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, the team transferred entangled states from the electron spins of solid-state defects to the spins of surrounding atomic nuclei, which are far more resilient to noise. The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

Quantum key distribution allows two users to establish secret keys whose security is grounded in the laws of quantum mechanics. Extending this capability to multiple users is an essential step toward quantum networks that support secure communication among many participants. Quantum cryptographic conferencing addresses this need by enabling multiple users to share the same secure key, which they can then use to protect group communications.

Quantum communication networks consist of several connected nodes that exchange information encoded in quantum states. These networks could potentially enable more secure communications between quantum devices in different locations.

Neutrinos are the pervasive yet intangible particles that permeate the universe, streaming through whole planets, stars, and our

Researchers from MIT have designed a new qubit architecture that enables qubits to interact with each other much

Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have extended the search for evidence of microscopic black holes produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The formation of these tiny, fleeting objects at the LHC represents one way theorists have sought to resolve anomalies in our understanding of the basic structure of spacetime, while the method used to look for them demonstrates a new way of searching for new particles.

Molecular gases are a new form of artificial quantum matter. However, when these molecules collide, they are often lost extremely rapidly. Researchers from Radboud University and Columbia University have been able to suppress this collisional loss, paving the way for strongly interacting quantum matter. This new artificial quantum matter allows researchers to study quantum behavior relevant to electrons in real materials. Their results are published in Science.

Physicists at The City College of New York have demonstrated a new way to transfer microwave signals onto light using magnetic waves inside a layered semiconductor. The work establishes a materials platform for building interfaces that could one day link quantum computers through optical networks. The research, titled "Microwave-to-optical transduction using magnon–exciton coupling," was led by the Laboratory for Nano and Micro Photonics (LaNMP) at CCNY, headed by physics professor Vinod M. Menon. It appears in the journal Nature Materials.

Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives rise to thought-experiment oddities like Schrödinger's famous dead-and-alive cat. The process by which quantum phenomena like superposition—the paradoxical affliction of Schrödinger's cat—fade into the classical reality we experience is known as decoherence.

A Stanford team has documented the first direct observation of quantum jumps of sound in a mechanical resonator, completing an arc of scientific exploration that started more than 100 years ago.

Quantum computers are no longer theoretical concepts. Today, they are being developed to tackle a range of complex problems, including exploring financial risk, modeling complex molecules and optimizing massive logistics networks. However, until now, there has been no way to benchmark the computational power of different systems on the same scale to see how they compare.

Physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have developed a technology that uses quantum sensors to measure biomagnetic signals, such as heart activity. Researchers from the DIAQNOS (DIAmond-based Quantum Sensing for NeurOSurgery) flagship project, coordinated by Dr. Arne Wickenbrock in Mainz, have demonstrated the potential of quantum technology for future medical applications.

Jonathan Halliwell explains how quantum decoherence is key to understanding how we transition from a world with a wave-like nature of matter and energy to the classical macroscopic world that we’re used to. The post Where Does the Quantum World End and Ours Begin? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Author(s): Sophia ChenResearchers demonstrate a new quantum memory device that will enable faraway nodes in a network to coordinate in time, a key ingredient for a future quantum Internet. [Physics 19, s120] Published Wed Sep 16, 2026

Author(s): Marric StephensIncreasing the charging rate of a quantum battery leads to unavoidable fluctuations in the total energy stored.  [Physics 19, s114] Published Tue Sep 15, 2026

Xufeng Zhang is using magnets to make computers more power efficient at the quantum level. The Northeastern professor of electrical and computer engineering recently published two papers highlighting small-scale magnetic systems he and his team developed that could help make computers much more power efficient in the future.

Have you ever wondered what Earth observation satellites see when they look down at the deep ocean or a dense tropical forest during the dead of night? The answer, for the most part, is nothing. Standard optical sensors require a steady stream of light to function, and in these photon-limited regions, they hit a hard physical boundary. But what if we could rewrite the rules of optical imaging? By borrowing techniques from quantum photonics, we can push beyond these classical limits and unlock a fundamentally new way to observe the darkest and most hidden environments on our planet.

The vast majority of modern quantum technologies—from quantum cryptography to the quantum internet to the quantum computer—rely on one essential element: the transmission of photons. Two qubits (two atoms, for example) exchange information: One qubit emits a photon, and the other qubit absorbs it.

Physicists at the University of Oxford have helped confirm that one of the strangest phenomena in physics—quantum entanglement—occurs even among some of the heaviest and most fleeting particles ever created. The discovery, made using the world's most powerful particle collider at CERN, has been published in Physical Review Letters.

Gravity from entropy theory offer hints of why low-entropy regions persist in the universe The post Could quantum information theory explain universe evolution? appeared first on Physics World.

Researchers have experimentally demonstrated the optical Magnus effect for the first time, revealing that a tightly focused laser interacts most strongly with an atom slightly away from the beam’s center. The unexpected shift is similar to the physics that makes a spinning table tennis ball curve through the air. Because lasers are used to control qubits, the effect could create errors in quantum computers, but it might also provide a new way to couple qubits together.

Scientists are combining an electron microscope with a quantum computer to squeeze far more information from each electron. The approach could reveal faint details with fewer electrons, helping protect fragile samples that conventional microscopy can damage.

Researchers at Harvard have demonstrated a way to protect quantum information using microscopic sound waves. By continuously surrounding a diamond-based qubit with mechanical vibrations, they extended its coherence time by roughly threefold. The same phonons could eventually both transmit and protect quantum information, opening the door to compact sound-based quantum networks on chips.

Quantum computers promise to tackle problems that are extraordinarily difficult for today's computers. But there is a major obstacle: quantum systems are notoriously fragile. Noise, loss and even tiny disturbances can destroy the delicate behavior that gives them their power. Building systems with many quantum particles is also extremely challenging.

Researchers have found a way to perform certain quantum operations more than 1,000 times faster, cutting thousands of repeated control cycles down to just one. The advance could reduce errors and bring reliable, fault-tolerant quantum computers closer to reality.

Author(s): Michael SchirberA crystal with special geometric properties can be optically driven to produce an output beam with any desired polarization. [Physics 19, s113] Published Thu Sep 10, 2026

Author(s): Klaus RichterTheorists find a persistent signature of a chaotic quantum system’s initial state, implying a memory effect—called a quantum birthmark—that resists thermodynamic equilibration. [Physics 19, 125] Published Thu Sep 10, 2026

To monitor the amount and type of nuclear material at power plants and weapons facilities, scientists look for a special signal—the unique pattern of gamma rays emitted by specific radioactive elements. However, some of these elements also emit X-rays in the same energy range as the gamma-ray emissions, masking the signal and making nuclear stockpiles harder to assess.

Within tiny halos of light clinging to a vanishingly thin wisp of optical fiber, scientist Jongmin Lee guides atoms like marbles through a narrow pipe. Rock the fiber and the atoms shift side by side; they just don't fall off. But don't be deceived by the seemingly delicate nature of his experiment. Lee is exploring how to measure motion precisely in rough-and-tumble environments.

Quantum technologies are poised to transform fields ranging from medicine and sensing to computing and communications by manipulating the energy states of atoms and molecules. These manipulations are achieved by controlling quantum states with laser pulses.

So far, quantum computers have been held back by their extreme sensitivity to errors and external disturbances. The longer a quantum operation takes, the greater the risk of computational errors.

Debate span atomic and particle physics The post Doubts cast on ‘superradiant neutrino laser’ proposal appeared first on Physics World.

SkyWater Technology has launched SkyWater Quantum Solutions, a dedicated merchant supplier offering focused on semiconductor process development, integration, and manufacturing. The offering will provide semiconductor solutions for quantum computing, networking, and sensing applications, with the aim of accelerating customers’ time to market, according to SkyWater. The newly established business will address applications across quantum computing, networking, sensing, and timing. It will cater to a range of technologies such as photonics, superconducting devices, materials, interconnects, packaging, and heterogeneous integration.brings together SkyWater’s semiconductor process development and manufacturing capabilities in...

For decades, physicists have searched for dark matter, the invisible substance thought to make up roughly 85% of all matter in the universe. Although its gravitational influence shapes galaxies and the large-scale structure of the cosmos, dark matter has never been directly detected. Now, an international team has identified a new class of quantum materials that could dramatically improve the search for some of the lightest and most elusive forms of dark matter.

A team of scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Cleveland Clinic and IBM (NYSE: IBM), has calculated nine

Electronic voting, the use of electronic systems to cast, record or count votes, could potentially simplify the process of electing new political leaders or other representatives. While some countries have already started using internet-connected devices or electronic voting machines at polling stations, the trustworthiness, security and anonymity of electronic voting systems are still widely debated.

Students need to experiment with real quantum-computing systems, says Alex Krasnok The post Universities should judge quantum-computing investments by what students learn appeared first on Physics World.

Imaginary numbers first appeared in the 16th century as a mathematical invention, introduced to solve equations that real numbers could not. As the name implies, many treated them as kind of trick to get results, rather than an underlying truth about the nature of reality. Although highly controversial at the time, these numbers are now ubiquitous […] The post Real-number quantum theory can be more wrong than you thought appeared first on Physics World.

Helium—the lightest atom that can be laser-cooled and controlled—powers a new design for high-powered, stable quantum computers.

For decades, physicists have worked to prove the strange predictions of quantum mechanics with real experiments. As quantum computers have grown more powerful, researchers have devised increasingly sophisticated ways to test whether these machines are truly harnessing quantum effects—but every method so far has run into limits.

Superfluid helium could offer a new way to tackle one of the biggest challenges in scaling up quantum computers, say researchers from the University of Surrey. The research team has introduced a conceptual design for a new type of qubit that could be much less vulnerable to errors.

A more realistic quantum model has revealed evidence that strange, nearly immobile quasiparticles called fractons could exist in solid materials. Their inability to move freely could make them promising building blocks for unusually robust quantum information storage.

Physicists have directly observed a long-predicted quantum effect of gravity, putting one of Einstein’s foundational ideas to a striking new test. Using ultracold atoms, researchers split an atom’s quantum wave so that one part was held in place while the other fell freely under gravity, then reunited the two to measure the tiny difference that emerged.

Heavy particle could be dominated by gluons The post Missing decay at BESIII points to long-sought glueball appeared first on Physics World.

Scientists have spotted the first hints that Einstein's formulation of gravity operates in the quantum realm.

Neutrinos are pervasive yet intangible particles that permeate the universe, streaming through whole planets, stars, and our bodies by the trillions each second. The elementary particles are often described as “ghostly” due to their near-zero mass and their elusive nature, as they have very little interaction with normal matter. Since their discovery in 1956, neutrinos have continued to surprise physicists with their unexpected properties and behaviors. For instance, the particles come in multiple “flavors” and can morph from one to the other. Neutrinos may also be their own anti-particle. And their extremely weak interactions make them close to impossible to detect. Last year, scientists seemed to add...

By Alius Noreika Key takeaways The claim, and the answer that arrived two weeks later Jay Gambetta, director of

Physicists at the BESIII Collaboration have breathed new life into a decades-old test of one of the Standard Model's most important ideas, using a technique that had gone almost untouched by experimenters for 35 years.

Two superconducting qubits, a metre of cable apart, have been driven into an entangled state not in spite of their environment, but by it The post Noise that entangles may accelerate the dawn of quantum technologies appeared first on Physics World.

Lancaster University researchers are spearheading a major new European research initiative that aims to redefine how artificial intelligence

Scientists have uncovered an unusual form of electron behavior in zirconium pentatelluride, a quantum material that can act as both an insulator and a conductor. Under temperatures near absolute zero and magnetic fields reaching 60 tesla, electrons produced quantum oscillations that continued even after conventional physics predicted they should disappear.

Physicists have proven a 100-year-old prediction of relativity by showing that Einstein's equivalence principle holds at quantum scales.

A new study has demonstrated that it is possible to make a network of atoms and photons that could improve how artificial intelligence stores and recalls memories. This network, called a quantum-optical spin glass, works as an associative memory, a form of AI that enables the recall of full memories from partial information—much like how humans can recognize a person's face in a blurred photograph.

A team of Korean researchers has become the first in the world to identify the origin of the "beating" signal that has long been a major obstacle to interpreting quantum signals in topological insulator (TI) nanowires. Their analysis confirmed that the beating arises when two different quantum oscillations overlap: one created by topological electronic states on the surface and the other by ordinary electronic states inside the nanowire. This achievement provides a key criterion for interpreting the signals of topological quantum devices and realizing desired electronic states.

Researchers from MIT have designed a new qubit architecture that enables qubits to interact with each other much more quickly while remaining very stable. This advance could someday help scientists build practical quantum computers that can run long, complex algorithms with high accuracy.

The hidden world of quantum mechanics exists at scales many orders of magnitude smaller than living organisms, yet scientists have long theorized that quantum effects play an important role in biology. Birds' ability to sense magnetic fields during migration is one of the best-known mysteries in this field, with leading theories suggesting that this sensing could be achieved by exploiting quantum entanglement.

Efficient heat management in solids is key to advancing the next generation of electronics. However, wavelike heat movement

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers developed an artificial intelligence system that can manipulate individual molecules to build custom materials with atomic precision.

Author(s): Ana Maria Rey, James K. Thompson, and Haoqing ZhangTwo studies find that fundamental quantum constraints rule out a previously proposed neutrino-laser scheme. [Physics 19, 120] Published Wed Sep 02, 2026

An international team including Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Sir Roger Penrose has observed a long-predicted effect of gravity on a falling quantum object for the first time. The result shows that a fundamental principle at the heart of Einstein's theory of gravity remains consistent with the behavior of matter in the quantum world. The study, led by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the University of Ulm and the University of Oxford, was published today (Sept. 2) in Science Advances.

Neutrinos are pervasive yet intangible particles that permeate the universe, streaming through whole planets, stars and our bodies by the trillions each second. The elementary particles are often described as "ghostly" for their near-zero mass and elusive nature, as they have very little interaction with normal matter.

A new Quantum Monte Carlo method reveals distinct entanglement signatures of different quantum critical points The post Probing quantum critical points appeared first on Physics World.

A research group in Japan has demonstrated a world-record 10-channel multiplexed quantum photonic interface based on an integrated waveguide array, a key technology for optically interconnecting multiple quantum computers. The study is published in the journal Optica.

Diffraqtion, an MIT and University of Maryland spinout building quantum camera platforms for defense and space sensing, has secured strategic investments from Lockheed Martin Ventures and Presidio Ventures, the venture capital arm of Sumitomo Corporation. The latest financing brings the company's raised total for its pre-seed round to more than $10 million. Diffraqtion's cameras draw on quantum estimation theory rather than quantum compute, without using qubits or cryogenics. The cameras resolve detail below the diffraction limit; by sorting incoming light by its shape rather than its brightness, according to the company, the imaging technology measures information that conventional cameras discard. This reduces the aperture and...

Scientists and philosophers have argued over the nature of time since … well, since time immemorial. Is time real, or is it a convenient illusion? Why does time seem to flow in just one direction? In a new book called “On Time,” British physicist Jim Al-Khalili lays out what he thinks is the answer to such questions.

The XENONnT experiment, in its hunt for dark matter, has detected the rare, feeble glow of neutrinos smacking into electrons

Physicists have demonstrated a new way to entangle distant quantum bits without the constant measurements and active control normally required. The team created a “quantum bath,” a shared environment filled with correlated microwave photons that automatically pushes separated qubits into an entangled state and helps keep them there. The experiment confirms a theoretical prediction made more than 20 years ago and could offer a simpler way to connect modules in future quantum computers.