The study of elementary particles and forces is of central importance to our understanding of the universe. Now a team of physicists from the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo show how an unconventional type of quantum computer opens a new door to the world of elementary particles.

Philip Kurian, a theoretical physicist and founding director of the Quantum Biology Laboratory (QBL) at Howard University in Washington, D.C., has used the laws of quantum mechanics, which Schrödinger postulated, and the QBL’s discovery of cytoskeletal filaments exhibiting quantum optical features, to set a drastically revised upper bound on the computational capacity of carbon-based life in the entire history of Earth. Published in Science Advances, Kurian’s latest work conjectures a relationship between this information-processing limit and that of all matter in the observable universe.

Christine Muschik, a research associate faculty member at Perimeter Institute and a professor at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing, is working at the frontier of quantum computing today – using not just “qubits” that are represented as superpositions of zeros and ones, but with multi-level “qudits” that go well beyond the binary qubit realm.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, along with scientists and engineers at the computer chip manufacturer Diraq, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Chicago and Manchester University, have proposed the development of a quantum sensor made of quantum bits called spin qubits in silicon to probe beyond Standard Model physics. Diraq is a global leader in quantum computing technology on silicon, which is essential to the Quandarum project.

Using a novel type of quantum computer, Martin Ringbauer’s experimental team at the University of Innsbruck, and the theory group led by Christine Muschik at IQC at the University of Waterloo, Canada report in a publication in the journal Nature Physics how they have successfully simulated a complete quantum field theory in more than one spatial dimension.

Long at the vanguard of international efforts to answer questions like these, ORNL’s contributions remain strong today. David Radford, head of the lab’s Fundamental Nuclear and Particle Physics section, is an internationally renowned expert in the field who has had an indelible impact on the development of germanium detectors. Vital experimentation tools at the forefront of fundamental physics research, germanium detectors are large, single crystals of germanium — a metallic element — used to detect radiation and enable incredibly precise energy measurements.

Scientists from Durham's top-rated Physics department have set a global milestone by achieving quantum entanglement of individual molecules using cutting-edge magic-wavelength optical tweezers. This achievement not only overcomes a fundamental challenge in quantum science but also opens up new possibilities in quantum computing, high-precision measurements, and physics research.

Researchers at Rice University have made a meaningful advance in the simulation of molecular electron transfer — a fundamental process underpinning countless physical, chemical and biological processes. The study, published in Science Advances, details the use of a trapped-ion quantum simulator to model electron transfer dynamics with unprecedented tunability, unlocking new opportunities for scientific exploration in fields ranging from molecular electronics to photosynthesis.

In a paper recently published in Nature Physics, an international group of researchers comprised of an experimental team from Switzerland and France and theoretical physicists in Canada and the U.S., including Rice University, have found evidence of this enigmatic quantum spin liquid in a material known as pyrochlore cerium stannate. They achieved this by combining state-of-the-art experimental techniques, including neutron scattering at extremely low temperatures, with theoretical analysis. By measuring the way in which neutrons interact magnetically with the electron spin in pyrochlore, the researchers observed the collective excitations of spins interacting strongly with lightlike waves.

A research team coordinated by the Department of Physics was able to work on the powerful computers of Google's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab to conduct a study on confinement in lattice gauge theory. The results of the study have been published in Nature Physics.