At TU Wien (Vienna), methods are being developed to extract valuable substances from biomass – and quantum cascade lasers offer some very interesting new possibilities.

By taking two flakes of special materials that are just one atom thick and twisting them at high angles, researchers at the University of Rochester have unlocked unique optical properties that could be used in quantum computers and other quantum technologies. In a new study published in Nano Letters, the researchers show that precisely layering nano-thin materials creates excitons—essentially, artificial atoms—that can act as quantum information bits, or qubits.

In their ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of quantum possibilities, physicists at WashU have created a new type of “time crystal,” a novel phase of matter that defies common perceptions of motion and time.

Sensing and communication systems based on quantum-mechanical phenomena can greatly outperform today’s systems, in terms of accuracy and reliability, and are considered a pivotal part of developing next-generation networks. Developing quantum information and decision systems that come close to meeting the theoretical quantum advantages has been a longstanding challenge. Now, a team of researchers at MIT and the University of Ferrara (UniFe) in Italy has developed a framework that could open up new ways of pushing such quantum systems all the way to their fundamental limits.

Physicists at the University of Cologne have taken an important step forward in the pursuit of topological quantum computing by demonstrating the first-ever observation of Crossed Andreev Reflection (CAR) in topological insulator (TI) nanowires. This finding, published under the title ‘Long-range crossed Andreev reflection in topological insulator nanowires proximitized by a superconductor’ in Nature Physics, deepens our understanding of superconducting effects in these materials, which is essential for realizing robust quantum bits (qubits) based on Majorana zero-modes in the TI platform — a major goal of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Matter and Light for Quantum Computing’ (ML4Q).

Now scientists from the University of California San Diego have uncovered a key finding to another unique property: at high pressure and low temperature, liquid water separates into two distinct liquid phases — one high-density and one low-density. Their work appears in Nature Physics.

Nuclear physicists at the University of Washington developed a new framework to systematically analyze the interplay of these approximations. They showed that the impact of such approximations can be minimized by tuning simulation parameters. Such optimizations are demonstrated in the context of spin models sharing key features with nuclear interactions.

In this paper published in Phys. Rev. Applied 20, 044033, Zhaohui Ma et al. from the Stevens Institute of Technology in NJ USA present the characterisation a highly efficient and integrated source of photon pairs using IDQ’s unique Photon-Number-Resolving detectors. The direct access to photon number statistics allowed the team to verify the single-mode (thermal) nature of their source using a single PNR detector, a feature that is fundamental to later realise entanglement swapping using such sources.

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Eindhoven University of Technology, have created an organic semiconductor that forces electrons to move in a spiral pattern, which could improve the efficiency of OLED displays in television and smartphone screens, or power next-generation computing technologies such as spintronics and quantum computing.

Empa researchers from the nanotech@surfaces laboratory have experimentally recreated another fundamental theoretical model from quantum physics, which goes back to the Nobel Prize laureate Werner Heisenberg. The basis for the successful experiment was a kind of “quantum Lego” made of tiny carbon molecules known as nanographenes. This synthetic bottom-up approach enables versatile experimental research into quantum technologies, which could one day help drive breakthroughs in the field.