Quantum

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Scientists have observed an unusual quantum state of matter for the first time.Physicist Andrea Bianchi has observed the “quantum spin liquid” state in a magnetic material created in his lab.It’s not every day that someone discovered a new state of matter in quantum physics, the scientific field devoted to describing the behavior of atomic and subatomic particles in order to understand their properties.Yet this is exactly what an international team of researchers has done. The team includes Andrea Bianchi, University of…

Scientists keep on pushing the efficiency of solar panels higher and higher, and there's a new record to report: a new solar cell has hit 39.5 percent efficiency under the standard 1-sun global illumination conditions.  That 1-sun marker is simply a standardized way of measuring a fixed amount of sunlight, and almost 40 percent of that radiation can now be converted into electricity. The previous record for this type of solar panel material was 39.2 percent efficiency.There are more types of solar cells around than you…

Inside NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, scientists form bubbles from ultracold gas, shown in pink in this illustration. Lasers, also depicted, are used to cool the atoms, while an atom chip, illustrated in gray, generates magnetic fields to manipulate their shape, in combination with radio waves. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechProduced inside <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Established in 1958,…

Remember we’re dealing with the photon’s wave function here. Since the bounce doesn’t constitute a measurement, the wave function doesn’t collapse. Instead, it splits in two: Most of the wave function remains in the box, but the small, rapidly oscillating piece near where the mirror was inserted leaves the box and heads toward the detector.Because this superoscillatory piece has been plucked from the rest of the wave function, it is now identical to a photon of much higher energy. When this piece hits the detector, the…

Spintronic computing artistic concept illustration.<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Columbia University</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in New York City that was established in 1754. This makes it the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest in the United States. It is often just referred to as Columbia, but its official…

An international team of researchers across the UK, the US and Portugal think they've found an answer to ray tracing's steep performance requirements. And according to them, the answer lies in a hybrid of classical ray tracing algorithms with quantum computing. According to the research paper (currently in preprint), ray tracing workloads aided by quantum computing can offer an up to 190% performance improvement by slashing the number of calculations required by each ray, significantly reducing the requirements of the…

Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have broken the world record for solar cell efficiency. Reaching almost 40 percent, the new device boasts the highest efficiency recorded for any type of solar cell in real-world conditions.The team’s new solar cell clocked an efficiency of 39.5 percent, under lighting conditions equivalent to that of the Sun. That’s an important distinction to make – other experimental solar cells have registered efficiencies as high as 47 percent, but that’s under highly…

NASA's Cold Atom Lab aboard International Space Station (ISS) has come up with a discovery that can give a new direction to quantum research. In this lab, researchers have experimented with gas to form an exotic material. Gas, when cooled to nearly absolute zero (minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 273 degrees Celsius) formed small, round blobs. An article published on NASA's website compares the formation of these bubbles to that of egg yolks with thin eggshells. The ultracold atomic gas bubbles form a hollow sphere.…

Quantum non-demolition measurements refer to observing certain quantum states without destroying them. It's a difficult process. Having a functioning quantum computer that does not break down while calculations are made can go a long way in addressing the problems. So, scientists have discovered a new technique for recording quantum non-demolition measurements. This technique involves mechanical quantum systems – objects relatively large in quantum computing terms but otherwise exceedingly tiny.The scientists used a thin…