Researchers Comb Atoms into a Novel Swirl
When you brush your hair in the morning, there’s a pretty good chance you’re not thinking about quantum physics. But the way your hair swirls as you brush is actually related to some features of the quantum world. Important properties of quantum particles are described by topology—a field of mathematics that classifies objects according to how many holes they have. This is not merely a question of fashion. In physical materials, topology can determine many interesting properties. Now, a team of JQI researchers has engineered a new kind of topological matter—one with a single whorl—by breaking free from the constraints of crystalline solids. They managed to do this by grooming their atomic states into a whorl situated in an abstract, infinite plane, rather than a coconut or donut shape.
A Frankenstein of Order and Chaos
Normally the word “chaos” evokes a lack of order: a hectic day, a teenager’s bedroom, tax season. And the physical understanding of chaos is not far off. It’s something that is extremely difficult to predict, like the weather. Chaos allows a small blip (the flutter of a butterfly wing) to grow into a big consequence (a typhoon halfway across the world), which explains why weather forecasts more than a few days into the future can be unreliable. Individual air molecules, which are constantly bouncing around, are also chaotic—it’s nearly impossible to pin down where any single molecule might be at any given moment.
Proposal Shows How Noisy Qubits Might Correct Themselves
One of the chief obstacles facing quantum computer designers—correcting the errors that creep into a processor’s calculations—could be overcome with a new approach by physicists from and the California Institute of Technology, who may have found a way to design quantum memory switches that would self-correct. The team’s theory paper, which was published Dec. 8, 2020 in the journal Physical Review Letters, suggests an easier path to creating stable quantum bits, or qubits, which ordinarily are subject to environmental disturbances and errors. Finding methods of correcting these errors is a major issue in quantum computer development, but the research team’s approach to qubit design could sidestep the problem.
Enhanced Frequency Doubling Adds to Photonics Toolkit
The digital age has seen electronics, including computer chips, shrink in size at an amazing rate, with ever tinier chips powering devices like smartphones, laptops and even autonomous drones. In the wake of this progress, another miniature technology has been gaining steam: integrated photonics. Photons, which are the quantum particles of light, have some advantages over electrons, the namesakes of electronics. For some applications, photons offer faster and more accurate information transfer and use less power than electrons. And because on-chip photonics are largely built using the same technology created for the electronics industry, they carry the promise of integrating electronics and photonics on the same chip.
A Billion Tiny Pendulums Could Detect the Universe’s Missing Mass
Researchers at JQI and their colleagues have proposed a novel method for finding dark matter, the cosmos’s mystery material that has eluded detection for decades. Dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe; ordinary matter, such as the stuff that builds stars and planets, accounts for just 5% of the cosmos. (A mysterious entity called dark energy, accounts for the other 68%.)