quantum physics tagged posts

In physical systems, transport takes many forms, such as electric current through a wire, heat through metal, or even water through a pipe. Each of these flows can be described by how easily the underlying quantity—charge, energy, or mass—moves through a material.

Normally, collisions and friction lead to resistance causing these flows to slow down or fade away. But in a new experiment at TU Wien, scientists have observed a system where that doesn’t happen at all.

By confining thousands of rubidium atoms to move along a single line using magnetic and optical fields, they created an ultracold quantum gas in which energy and mass move with perfect efficiency...

MIT physicists confirm that, like Superman, light has two identities that are impossible to see at once. Physicists at MIT recreated the double-slit experiment using individual photons and atoms held in laser light, uncovering the true limits of light’s wave–particle duality. Their results proved Einstein’s proposal wrong and confirmed a core prediction of quantum mechanics...

Scientists at the Institute for Photonic Quantum Systems (PhoQS) and the Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing (PC2) at Paderborn University have developed a powerful open-source software tool that allows them to simulate light behavior in quantum systems.

The unique feature of this tool, named “Phoenix,” is that researchers can use it to very quickly investigate complex effects to a level of detail that was previously unknown, and all without needing knowledge of high-performance computing. The results have now been published in Computer Physics Communications.

Phoenix solves equations that describe how light interacts with material at the quantum level, which is essential for under...

A new advancement in theoretical physics could, one day, help engineers develop new kinds of computer chips that might store information for longer in very small objects.

Add a dash of creamer to your morning coffee, and clouds of white liquid will swirl around your cup. But give it a few seconds, and those swirls will disappear, leaving you with an ordinary mug of brown liquid.

Something similar happens in quantum computer chips — devices that tap into the strange properties of the universe at its smallest scales — where information can quickly jumble up, limiting the memory capabilities of these tools.

That doesn’t have to be the case, said Rahul Nandkishore, associate professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In a new coup for theoretical physics, he a...