Using artificial intelligence, scientists can now identify complex quantum phases in materials in just minutes—a process that used to take months. The breakthrough, published in Newton, could significantly speed up research into quantum materials, particularly low dimensional superconductors. The study, a collaboration between Yale and Emory University, was seeded by a multi-institute collaboration initiative three years ago. Yale’s side of the research, led by Jinming Yang, a graduate research assistant, and Yu He, assistant professor of Yale’s Department of applied physics, was initiated under a Yale Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) internal preparatory project awarded in 2022. Other senior authors include Fang Liu and Yao Wang, assistant professors in Emory’s Department of Chemistry.

Led by Professor Pasquale Scarlino at EPFL, they developed a superconducting Kerr resonator, a device with controllable quantum properties, and engineered it to experience a two-photon drive, which sends pairs of photons into the system to carefully control its quantum state and study how it transitions between different phases.

Quantum spin liquids are fascinating states of matter where magnetic spins stay disordered, defying the usual rules of magnetism. Professor Yasuyuki Ishii and his team have made an exciting discovery about one such material, β’-EtMe₃Sb[Pd(dmit)₂]₂. Instead of acting like a 2D system as expected, it behaves like a 1D system. This breakthrough changes how we understand these mysterious materials, offering new insights into magnetism and opening doors to advances in quantum materials and technology.

Two Indian physicists have theoretically proposed a path-breaking idea which could fundamentally change the current view about the contents of the universe and potentially provide ways to probe a holy grail of physics, namely the quantum gravity. Professor Pankaj Joshi from Ahmedabad University, India (earlier at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research [TIFR], India) and Professor Sudip Bhattacharyya from TIFR have shown that gravitational collapse of matter in the early universe could give rise to incredibly dense point-like objects, namely visible or naked singularities, which could account for a significant fraction of unseen matter in the universe. This research will be published in the prestigious international academic journal, the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP).

A new study by Rice University physicist Qimiao Si unravels the enigmatic behaviors of quantum critical metals — materials that defy conventional physics at low temperatures. Published in Nature Physics Dec. 9, the research examines quantum critical points (QCPs), where materials teeter on the edge between two distinct phases such as magnetism and nonmagnetism. The findings illuminate the peculiarities of these metals and provide a deeper understanding of high-temperature superconductors, which conduct electricity without resistance at relatively high temperatures.

RTX's BBN Technologies is developing next-generation, compact, low-power, deployable photonic sensors that will provide users with better awareness of environmental elements critical to their missions with greater than ten-times the precision of current sensors. This new capability will have widespread defense and commercial applicability, disrupting fields such as LiDAR, fiber-based sensing, biosensing, system and network monitoring, navigation and communications.

Research using the ALICE experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider suggests for the first time the presence of gluonic quantum fluctuations at the subnucleon level in heavy nuclei. University of Kansas experimental nuclear physicist Daniel Tapia Takaki and his team have published findings detailing the breakthrough discovery in the Editor’s Suggestion of Physical Review Letters.

Scientists from Osaka Metropolitan University and the University of Tokyo have successfully used light to visualize tiny magnetic regions, known as magnetic domains, in a specialized quantum material. Moreover, they successfully manipulated these regions by the application of an electric field. Their findings offer new insights into the complex behavior of magnetic materials at the quantum level, paving the way for future technological advances.

Physicists at Purdue University have developed an innovative method to detect the motion of individual particles in quantum materials. This work, led by Alex Ruichao Ma, assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy, offers new insights into the quantum world and paves the way for future discoveries in quantum science and technologies.

A new study led by Rice University’s Qimiao Si has unveiled a new class of quantum critical metal, shedding light on the intricate interactions of electrons within quantum materials. Published in Physical Review Letters on Sept. 6, the research explores the effects of Kondo coupling and chiral spin liquids within specific lattice structures.