Category Physics

Stretching Metals at the Atomic level allows researchers to create important materials for Quantum, Electronic, and Spintronic Applications

CSE professor Bharat Jalan and Ph.D. student Sreejith Nair
University of Minnesota chemical engineering and materials science researchers have developed a breakthrough method for creating high-quality metal oxide films that are important for next generation applications like quantum computing and microelectronics. Photo by Olivia Hultgren

New technique paves the way for easy oxidation of historically ‘stubborn’ metals. A University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team has developed a first-of-its-kind, breakthrough method that makes it easier to create high-quality metal oxide thin films out of “stubborn” metals that have historically been difficult to synthesize in an atomically precise manner...

Read More

Team demonstrates Quantum Advantage on Optimization problems with a 5,000-qubit Programmable Spin Glass

Team demonstrates quantum advantage on optimization problems with a 5000-qubit programmable spin glass
The D-Wave Advantage processor, with more than 5,000 qubits and 40,000 programmable couplers, was used to demonstrate coherent annealing through a quantum phase transition, giving a speedup over simulated annealing. Credit: D-Wave

Over the past decades, researchers and companies worldwide have been trying to develop increasingly advanced quantum computers. The key objective of their efforts is to create systems that will outperform classical computers on specific tasks, which is also known as realizing “quantum advantage.”

A research team at D-Wave Quantum Inc., a Canadian quantum computing company, recently created a new quantum computing system that outperforms classical computing systems on optimization problems...

Read More

Curved Spacetime in a Quantum Simulator

[Translate to English:] Montage aus Astronomie-Foto von Gravitationslinseneffekt und Teilchen

The theory of relativity works well when you want to explain cosmic-scale phenomena—such as the gravitational waves created when black holes collide. Quantum theory works well when describing particle-scale phenomena—such as the behavior of individual electrons in an atom. But combining the two in a completely satisfactory way has yet to be achieved. The search for a “quantum theory of gravity” is considered one of the significant unsolved tasks of science.

This is partly because the mathematics in this field is highly complicated...

Read More

The World’s Smallest Impedance Spectroscopy System in the Form of a Pill

The world's smallest impedance spectroscopy system in the form of a pill
The core of the spectroscopy capsule contains the system-in-package, a flexible circuit board, and a ceramic pcb. Credit: Fraunhofer IZM

Imagine a scenario where you simply just throw a pill in a liquid to identify a problem—this is now one step closer to reality thanks to the work done by researchers at Fraunhofer IZM in cooperation with Micro Systems Technologies (MST) and Sensry GmbH. As small as a piece of candy, the waterproof IoT sensor can reliably measure the properties of liquids even in hard-to-reach places. This can make the maintenance of industrial machines much easier and even help to identify diseases.

The larger an industrial machine, the more difficult it is to troubleshoot malfunctions by detecting unwanted oil pressure deviations or even line leaks from the outs...

Read More