Lifeboat Foundation

Be it magnets or superconductors, materials are known for their various properties. However, these properties may change spontaneously under extreme conditions. Researchers at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) and the Technische Universität München (TUM) have discovered an entirely new type of these phase transitions. They display the phenomenon of quantum entanglement involving many atoms, which previously has only been observed in the realm of a few atoms. The results were recently published in the scientific journal Nature.

New fur for the quantum cat

In physics, Schroedinger’s cat is an allegory for two of the most awe-inspiring effects of quantum mechanics: entanglement and superposition. Researchers from Dresden and Munich have now observed these behaviors on a much larger scale than that of the smallest of particles. Until now, materials that display properties, like magnetism, have been known to have so-called domains—islands in which the materials properties are homogeneously either of one or a different kind (imagine them being either black or white, for example).

The infrared (IR) spectrum is a vast information landscape that modern IR detectors tap into for diverse applications such as night vision, biochemical spectroscopy, microelectronics design, and climate science. But modern sensors used in these practical areas lack spectral selectivity and must filter out noise, limiting their performance. Advanced IR sensors can achieve ultrasensitive, single-photon level detection, but these sensors must be cryogenically cooled to 4 K (−269 C) and require large, bulky power sources making them too expensive and impractical for everyday Department of Defense or commercial use.

DARPA’s Optomechanical Thermal Imaging (OpTIm) program aims to develop novel, compact, and room-temperature IR sensors with quantum-level performance – bridging the performance gap between limited capability uncooled thermal detectors and high-performance cryogenically cooled photodetectors.

“If researchers can meet the program’s metrics, we will enable IR detection with orders-of-magnitude improvements in sensitivity, spectral control, and response time over current room-temperature IR devices,” said Mukund Vengalattore, OpTIm program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “Achieving quantum-level sensitivity in room-temperature, compact IR sensors would transform battlefield surveillance, night vision, and terrestrial and space imaging. It would also enable a host of commercial applications including infrared spectroscopy for non-invasive cancer diagnosis, highly accurate and immediate pathogen detection from a person’s breath or in the air, and pre-disease detection of threats to agriculture and foliage health.”

Egor Suvorov/iStock.

That sentence belongs in a sci-fi movie, but it also belongs right here in real life.

Protons are particles that exist in the nucleus of all atoms, with their number defining the elements themselves. Protons, however, are not fundamental particles. Rather, they are composite particles made up of smaller subatomic particles, namely two “up quarks” and one “down quark” bound together by force-carrying particles (bosons) called “gluons.”

This structure isn’t certain, however, and quantum physics suggests that along with these three quarks, other particles should be “popping” into and out of existence at all times, affecting the mass of the proton. This includes other quarks and even quark-antiquark pairs.

Indeed, the deeper scientists have probed the structure of the proton with high-energy particle collisions, the more complicated the situation has become. As a result, for around four decades, physicists have speculated that protons may host a heavier form of quark than up and down quarks called “intrinsic charm quarks,” but confirmation of this has been elusive.

Lecture from the mini-series “Cosmology & Quantum Foundations” from the “Philosophy of Cosmology” project. A University of Oxford and Cambridge Collaboration.

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A cold-atom experiment suggests that interactions between particles can induce the coexistence of localized and extended states in a quantum wire.

Researchers from North Carolina State University used computational analysis to predict how optical properties of semiconductor material zinc selenide (ZnSe) change when doped with halogen elements, and found the predictions were confirmed by experimental results. Their method could speed the process of identifying and creating materials useful in quantum applications.

Creating semiconductors with desirable properties means taking advantage of point defects—sites within a material where an atom may be missing, or where there are impurities. By manipulating these sites in the material, often by adding different elements (a process referred to as “doping”), designers can elicit different properties.

“Defects are unavoidable, even in ‘pure’ materials,” says Doug Irving, University Faculty Scholar and professor of materials science and engineering at NC State. “We want to interface with those spaces via doping to change certain properties of a material. But figuring out which elements to use in doping is time and labor intensive. If we could use a computer model to predict these outcomes it would allow material engineers to focus on elements with the best potential.”

Japanese and U.S. physicists have used atoms about 3 billion times colder than interstellar space to open a portal to an unexplored realm of quantum magnetism.

“Unless an alien civilization is doing experiments like these right now, anytime this experiment is running at Kyoto University it is making the coldest fermions in the universe,” said Rice University’s Kaden Hazzard, corresponding theory author of a study published today in Nature Physics. “Fermions are not rare particles. They include things like electrons and are one of two types of particles that all matter is made of.”

A Kyoto team led by study author Yoshiro Takahashi used lasers to cool its fermions, atoms of ytterbium, within about one-billionth of a degree of absolute zero, the unattainable temperature where all motion stops. That’s about 3 billion times colder than interstellar space, which is still warmed by the afterglow from the Big Bang.