Supersolids are a new form of quantum matter that has only recently been demonstrated. The state of matter can be produced artificially in ultracold, dipolar quantum gases. A team led by Innsbruck physicist Francesca Ferlaino has now demonstrated a missing hallmark of superfluidity, namely the existence of quantized vortices as system’s response to rotation. They have observed tiny quantum vortices in the supersolid, which also behave differently than previously assumed.

Finnish technology company Quanscient, a leader in cloud-based multiphysics simulation technology and quantum algorithms, announces today its new growth funding of €5.2 million. The round was led by prominent Nordic early-stage venture capital firm Crowberry Capital and joined by Speen Holding with follow-on investments from Finnish early-stage venture capital investors Maki.vc and First Fellow. The new funding will enable Quanscient to bring engineering simulations into the quantum era.

Some phenomena that occur in materials can be challenging to mimic using quantum computers, leaving gaps in the problems that scientists have explored with quantum hardware. To fill one of these gaps, MIT researchers developed a technique to generate synthetic electromagnetic fields on superconducting quantum processors. The team demonstrated the technique on a processor comprising 16 qubits.

Quantum Motion, a UK-based quantum computing scale-up founded by Professor John Morton, University College London (UCL), and Professor Simon Benjamin, University of Oxford, has worked alongside Goldman Sachs to research how quantum computers can be used in financial services to perform complex calculations, such as options pricing. The research, which explored how intricate multi-qubit operations can be applied within pricing algorithms, is now undergoing peer-review and has been published on the arXiv, an open-access archive of scientific research papers.

A new study published in Physical Review Letters on October 22 has challenged the assumptions by providing direct evidence of the breakdown of spin statistics in ion-atom charge exchange collisions. This study was led by scientists from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Researchers from Skoltech, the University of Warsaw, and the University of Iceland have demonstrated that by optical means it is possible to excite and stir the exciton-polariton condensate, which emits the linearly polarized light with polarization axis following the stirring direction. The rotation of the linear polarization of the emitted light directly corresponds to the stirring of the polariton spin. The speed of such modulation in time can reach GHz range, thanks to ultrafast dynamics of the polariton system. Remarkably, the team found that this precession occurs only at a specific resonant condition of the external stirring and internal system parameters. The work has been published in Optica.

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.

Emory chemist Fang Liu received $875,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for her work aimed at optimizing the use of light to spark the transfer of an electron. Known as photoredox catalysis, this powerful chemical process is one of the fastest growing areas of organic synthesis, with applications spanning everything from health care to renewable energy.

In a groundbreaking study, researchers from Purdue University and the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Munich have revealed an unexpected twist in molecular physics: they can break molecules apart using laser light, only to reform them in a new, stable state. This discovery defies conventional chemistry, where severing chemical bonds typically results in the destruction of the molecule.

A new study has uncovered the universal dynamics far from equilibrium in randomly interacting spin models, thereby complementing the well-established universality in low-energy equilibrium physics. The study, recently published in Nature Physics, was the result of a collaborative effort involving the research group led by Prof. Du Jiangfeng and Prof. Peng Xinhua at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), along with the theoretical groups of Prof. Zhai Hui from Tsinghua University and Dr. Zhang Pengfei from Fudan University.