The quantum Hall effect, a fundamental effect in quantum mechanics, not only generates an electric but also a magnetic current. It arises from the motion of electrons on an orbit around the nuclei of atoms. This has been demonstrated by the calculations of a team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) which were published in the journal "Physical Review Letters". These results can potentially be used to develop new types of inexpensive and energy-efficient devices. Electricity flows through all types of electronic devices, be it mobile phones or computers. However, this generates heat, which means that energy is lost. It also means that conventional computer chips cannot be infinitely scaled down. In the field of spin-orbitronics, researchers are looking for alternatives for storing and processing information without the loss of energy. The basic idea is to utilise not only an electron’s charge, but also its spin and orbital moment when processing information. Spin is the intrinsic angular momentum of an electron, and the orbital moment arises from the motion of the electrons around atomic nuclei. "Combining both effects would allow us to design new devices that are more powerful and efficient," says physicist Professor Ingrid Mertig at MLU.

Recently, researchers from at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg tackled a tricky piece of the QED puzzle. They focused on a phenomenon known as the electron self-energy, which occurs when an electron interacts with the quantum vacuum — the invisible sea of energy that pervades the whole universe.

Since the CMS and ATLAS experiments announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, they have been measuring its mass and interaction with other particles with ever-increasing precision. Now, researchers are setting their sights on the Higgs boson’s interaction with itself, which could provide physicists with clues to the stability of the Universe. To do this, physicists search for a much rarer phenomenon than the production of one Higgs boson: the production of Higgs boson pairs, known as di-Higgs. In a new study, using data from high-energy proton–proton collisions in Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the CMS experiment has released its latest search for di-Higgs production and provided constraints on their production rate.

Controlling matter at the atomic level has taken a major step forward, thanks to groundbreaking nanotechnology research by an international team of scientists led by physicists at the University of Bath. This advancement has profound implications for fundamental scientific understanding. It is also likely to have important practical applications, such as transforming the way researchers develop new medications.

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.

In 2014, a research team from Singapore demonstrated mathematically a direct connection between the complementarity principle and the degree of unknown information in a quantum system, the so-called entropic uncertainty. This connection means that no matter what combination of wave or particle characteristic of a quantum system is looked at, the amount of unknown information is a least one bit of information, i.e. the unmeasurable wave or particle. Researchers from Linköping University together with colleagues from Poland and Chile have now succeeded in confirming the Singapore researchers’ theory in reality with the help of a new type of experiment.

Scientists at the University of Würzburg and the German national metrology institute (PTB) have carried out an experiment that realizes a new kind of quantum standard of resistance. It’s based on the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect.

Physicists at Loughborough University have made an exciting breakthrough in understanding how to fine-tune the behaviour of electrons in quantum materials poised to drive the next generation of advanced technologies.

A team led by Prof. DING Dongsheng from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences experimentally observed higher-order and fractional discrete time crystals (DTCs) in periodically driven Rydberg atomic dissipative systems. Their study was published in Nature Communications.

It has been proven, in the incredibly tiny quantum realm, by an international team co-led by UC Santa Cruz physicist Jairo Velasco, Jr. In a new paper published on November 27 in Nature, the researchers detail an experiment that confirms a theory first put forth 40 years ago stating that electrons confined in quantum space would move along common paths rather than producing a chaotic jumble of trajectories.