If you start with a two-dimensional ribbon and make it narrower and narrower, when does it stop being a ribbon and start being a one-dimensional line? Scientists from Utrecht University and the University of Twente made one-atom-thick ultrathin nanoribbons consisting of germanium atoms. They have shown that this system exhibits amazing properties that can be useful, for example, in quantum computing. Their work was recently published in Nature Communications.

In a new study published in Physical Review D, Professor Ginestra Bianconi, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Queen Mary University of London, proposes a groundbreaking new framework that could revolutionise our understanding of gravity and its relationship with quantum mechanics.

Although the Navier-Stokes equations are the foundation of modern hydrodynamics, adopting them to quantum systems has so far been a major challenge. Researchers from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, Maciej Łebek, M.Sc. and Miłosz Panfil, Ph.D., Prof. UW, have shown that these equations can be generalised to quantum systems, specifically quantum liquids in which the motion of particles is restricted to one dimension. This discovery opens up new avenues for research into transport in one-dimensional quantum systems. The paper, published in the prestigious Physical Review Letters, was awarded an ‘editors’ suggestion'.

In the quest for ultra-secure, long-range quantum communication, two major challenges stand in the way: the unpredictable nature of atmospheric turbulence and the limitations of current optical wavefront correction techniques. Researchers at the University of Ottawa, under the supervision of Professor Ebrahim Karimi, the director of Nexus for Quantum Technologies, in collaboration with the National Research Council Canada (NRC) and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (Germany), have made significant advances in overcoming both obstacles. Their two latest breakthroughs—an AI-powered turbulence forecasting tool called TAROQQO and a high-speed Adaptive Optics (AO) system for correcting turbulence in quantum channels—represent a turning point in developing free-space quantum networks.

New quantum technologies developed by the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA) are driving novel scientific discoveries in physics, giving scientists advanced tools to explore complex behaviors of interacting quantum particles and the physical properties of materials. QSA, a National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, conducts research that fuels the development of quantum-enabled materials and technologies, leveraging quantum information science to accelerate the discovery and design of advanced materials for energy applications. QSA scientists from 15 different institutions are collaborating to advance materials physics and build the future of fundamental scientific discovery as the scientific community builds on powerful classical computers and enters the quantum realm for processing information better and faster.

UC Santa Barbara researchers are working to move cold atom quantum experiments and applications from the laboratory tabletop to chip-based systems, opening new possibilities for sensing, precision timekeeping, quantum computing and fundamental science measurements.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new computational approach to accurately model and predict these complex spin structures using quantum mechanics calculations.

Researchers based at the University of Cambridge have created a three-state (ternary) molecular switch controlled by light and temperature. Unlike materials such as silicon that switches between two states, the new complex material can act as a solid-state optical switch between three different molecular states. This provides a groundwork for future technologies like optical data storage, photonic circuits and quantum computing.

A first-ever discovery of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a two-magnon bound state has been achieved by a collaborative research team from Southern University of Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Renmin University of China, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization.

For decades, scientists have relied on electrodes and dyes to track the electrical activity of living cells. Now, engineers at the University of California San Diego have discovered that quantum materials just a single atom thick can do the job—using only light.