Category Physics

A Simpler Way to Connect Quantum Computers

photons captured at the wide end of the silicon waveguide are led out to the narrow end while preserving the shape and frequency of the light
Thompson’s team designed a nanoscopic silicon waveguide to capture the photons emitted by the erbium ion and send them as high-fidelity signals over the fiber optic cable. Image courtesy of the researchers

A new atomic device sends high-fidelity quantum information over fiber optic networks. Researchers have a new way to connect quantum devices over long distances, a necessary step toward allowing the technology to play a role in future communications systems.

While today’s classical data signals can get amplified across a city or an ocean, quantum signals cannot. They must be repeated in intervals — that is, stopped, copied and passed on by specialized machines called quantum repeaters...

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Quantum Discovery offers Glimpse into Other-Worldly Realm

Artistic illustration of an Alice ring, which researchers have just observed for the first time in nature. Credit: Heikka Valja/Aalto University

Experiments promote a curious flipside of decaying monopoles: A reality where particle physics is quite literally turned on its head. The field of quantum physics is rife with paths leading to tantalising new areas of study, but one rabbit hole offers a unique vantage point into a world where particles behave differently — through the proverbial looking glass.

Dubbed the ‘Alice ring’ after Lewis Carroll’s world-renowned stories on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the appearance of this object verifies a decades-old theory on how monopoles decay...

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New Quantum Device Generates Single Photons and Encodes Information

2023-08-24
Formed within wells indented into the stack of two different layered materials, a monolayer semiconductor and an anti-ferromagnetic crystal, the chiral quantum light emissions rise up out of the material and could be used for quantum information and communication applications.

A new approach to quantum light emitters generates a stream of circularly polarized single photons, or particles of light, that may be useful for a range of quantum information and communication applications. A Los Alamos National Laboratory team stacked two different atomically thin materials to realize this chiral quantum light source.

“Our research shows that it is possible for a monolayer semiconductor to emit circularly polarized light without the help of an external magnetic field,” said Han Htoon, scien...

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Brain-computer interface enables woman with Severe Paralysis to speak through Digital Avatar

Brain-computer interface enables woman with severe paralysis to speak through digital avatar
Multimodal speech decoding in a participant with vocal-tract paralysis. Credit: Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06443-4

Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) that has enabled a woman with severe paralysis from a brainstem stroke to speak through a digital avatar.

It is the first time that either speech or facial expressions have been synthesized from brain signals. The system can also decode these signals into text at nearly 80 words per minute, a vast improvement over commercially available technology.

Edward Chang, MD, chair of neurological surgery at UCSF, who has worked on the technology, known as a brain computer interface, or BCI, for more than a decade, hopes this latest research breakthrough, appearing Aug...

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