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Category: computing

Spatiotemporal light pulses could secure optical communication by masking data

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have developed a new approach to secure optical communication that hides information in the physical structure of light, making it difficult for unauthorized parties to intercept or decode. The study addresses a growing challenge: advances in quantum computing are expected to weaken many of today’s encryption methods. While most security solutions rely on complex mathematical algorithms, this research adds protection earlier in the process—during the transmission of the signal itself.

The research was led by Dr. Judith Kupferman and Prof. Shlomi Arnon from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The findings were published in Optical and Quantum Electronics.

The researchers propose a communication method based on specially shaped light pulses, known as spatiotemporal optical vortices. These light beams are designed so that their key features are not visible in standard measurements.

Quantum simulations reveal spin transport in 1D materials

Researchers from the Department of Energy’s Quantum Science Center (QSC) headquartered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have achieved a significant milestone by demonstrating the first digital quantum simulations of how spin currents change over time in a 1-D model of a quantum spin material. The results, now published in Physical Review Letters, establish a new, programmable way to use quantum computers to study the transport of spin—a fundamental quantum variable—in materials.

Spin transport measurements are a cornerstone of condensed matter physics, providing important insight into how quantum materials carry energy and information. In this work, QSC researchers, led by Purdue University’s Arnab Banerjee, demonstrated how a quantum computer can simulate spin transport behavior across ballistic, diffusive, and superdiffusive—meaning a faster and farther spread than typical diffusion—motion.

These different cases of spin transport represent fundamental changes in how the material responds to experimental probes. The simulation results make a direct comparison with experimental materials and open new avenues for understanding complex quantum phenomena such as coherence and energy flow in quantum materials.

Self-propulsion or slow diffusion: How bacteria, cells, and colloids respond to stimuli

What physical processes govern the movement of microscopic structures capable of interacting with their environment? The answer lies in two mechanisms: self-propulsion, to escape unfavorable locations; and slow diffusion, to move toward more advantageous ones. This is the finding of scientists Jacopo Romano and Andrea Gambassi from SISSA-Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in their new study published in Physical Review Letters.

In their work, the researchers combined computer simulations with mathematical calculations, taking inspiration from nature. It is well known that feedback-driven motion underlies the behavior of various microorganisms, which analyze incoming and outgoing signals and adapt their direction of movement accordingly. The study reproduces the physical behavior of natural and synthetic agents in two distinct scenarios: when a specific destination must be avoided based on signals, and when it must instead be reached.

The researchers found that in the first case, a process of “superdiffusion” occurs, with accelerated motion, while in the second case a subdiffusive process takes place, with much slower movement. These findings provide important insights for the design of smart particles capable of moving at the microscale, with potential applications in medicine, particularly for more efficient drug delivery.

Why this single-chip LED advance could shrink AR glasses and boost quantum links

Researchers at The University of Osaka, in collaboration with ULVAC, Inc. and Ritsumeikan University, have developed a new LED structure that generates circularly polarized light from a single chip. By combining a semipolar InGaN light-emitting structure with a stripe-shaped silicon nitride metasurface, the team created a compact light source that reduces energy-conversion loss and operates at room temperature.

This advancement could help bring ultra-compact, durable light sources closer to practical use in AR/VR, 3D displays, quantum communication, and optical security. The work is published in the journal Optical Materials Express.

Circularly polarized light is useful for a wide range of next-generation technologies. However, previous circularly polarized LEDs have struggled to combine high polarization, high efficiency, durability, and scalable manufacturing. In many previous designs, only one circular polarization component can be extracted from unpolarized light, placing a theoretical limit of 50% on conversion efficiency.

“You Have To Iterate, You Have To Fail, You Have To Quickly Pick Yourself Up”: Genome Loaded Onto Quantum Computer For First Time

The achievement marks a milestone in the quest to use quantum computing to unlock the full complexity of human genetic diversity, with implications for cancer, drug design, and personalised medicine.

We Can Now Simulate a Human Brain, Scientists Show

Go to https://ground.news/sabine to get 40% off the Vantage plan and see through sensationalized reporting. Stay fully informed on events around the world with Ground News.

Over the years, computer scientists have used cutting-edge processors to simulate the brains of increasingly more complex animals. They’ve already simulated worm and fruit fly brains, and are now working on mice. But according to a new paper, they’ve made a breakthrough that might allow them to simulate human brains, which contain 80 billion neurons compared to a fruit fly’s 140,000. Let’s take a look.

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.

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A novel lactam-based AIE building block for high-performance deep-blue electroluminescent materials

Developing high-performance deep-blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) requires the emitters to achieve a good balance among emission color, exciton utilization efficiency, and photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) in solid films. Herein, we report a new deep-blue emissive building block, abbreviated as PADP.

Reducing Wires in Quantum Computers

A wire-sharing protocol can minimize the number of wires in a quantum processor without significantly reducing speed, a new theoretical study shows.

As quantum computers continue to grow in size, one of the bottlenecks is the number of control wires that need to be connected to the quantum bits (qubits). A new theoretical study explores so-called time multiplexing, where one wire controls several qubits [1]. The researchers found that although this strategy requires extra processing time, the delays are less than expected, in part because control signals can be scheduled when certain qubits are busy with computations. The results could spur development of the electronic switches needed for time multiplexing in superconducting quantum computers.

Many state-of-the-art quantum computers consist of 100 or more superconducting qubits that operate inside dilution refrigerators at temperatures near absolute zero. Photos of these devices often show a tall, shiny column filled with dozens and dozens of connected wires—which might be mistaken for the qubits. Instead, these wires carry microwave signals from the room-temperature electronics that control the quantum processors to the micrometer-sized qubits inside the cryogenic refrigerator. The number of control wires can limit increases in the sizes of quantum computers. “You would like to have one wire going down to each qubit,” says Anton Frisk Kockum from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. “But that takes up a lot of space and brings heat into the fridge.”

Quantum simulations tackle photon polarization flip, but today’s hardware falls short

For the last 80 years, the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), which describes all electromagnetic interactions, has been a cornerstone of the standard model, withstanding the scrutiny of countless experiments and agreeing with observations down to the smallest known precisions. Yet, some high-intensity scales of QED remain unexplored, prompting some to wonder if quantum computers could deal with these scales’ inherent complexity.

Physicists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are now testing quantum simulations of these so-called strong-field QED (SFQED) processes, recently translating several processes into the language of quantum computing. Their latest work introduces an innovative method for simulating an SFQED process known as polarization flip on a quantum computer, setting a new benchmark for quantum simulations of high-energy phenomena. The research was published in Physical Review D on March 9, 2026.

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