Quantum Tech

Developments in quantum technology and artificial intelligence, AI, are predicted to transform research, as well as business and society as a whole. The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation is awarding a total of SEK 1.6 billion over ten years to these promising fields, in two separate research projects involving several Swedish higher education institutions. Together with other funding, the budget amounts to well over SEK 2 billion.

Electrons can be a persuasive bunch, or at least, a talkative bunch, according to new work from John Berry’s lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The spins of unpaired electrons are the root of permanent magnetism, and after 10 years of design and re-design, Berry’s lab has made a molecule that gains magnetic strength through an unusual way of controlling those spins.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have applied quantum techniques to understanding the electrolysis of water, which is the application of an electric current to H2O to produce the constituent elements hydrogen and oxygen. They found that electrons can 'tunnel' through barriers in aqueous solutions away from the electrodes, neutralising ions of impurities in that water. This can be detected in changes in current, which has applications ...

Researchers have shown how the principles of general relativity open the door to novel electronic applications such as a three-dimensional electron lens and electronic invisibility devices. In a study funded by the Academy of Finland, Aalto University researchers Alex Westström and Teemu Ojanen propose a method to go beyond special relativity and simulate Einstein's theory of general relativity in inhomogeneous Weyl semimetals.

It's not easy to bounce a single particle of light off a single atom that is less than a billionth of a metre wide. However, researchers at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore have shown they can double the odds of success, an innovation that might be useful in quantum computing and metrology. The findings were published in Nature Communications.

In the late 18th century, Ernst Chladni, a scientist and musician, discovered that the vibrations of a rigid plate could be visualised by covering it with a thin layer of sand and drawing a bow across its edge. With the bow movement, the sand bounces and shifts, collecting along the nodal lines of the vibration. Chladni's discovery of these patterns earned him the nickname, "father of acoustics." His discovery is still used in the design and cons...

Quantum physicists in Oriol Romero-Isart's research group in Innsbruck show in two current publications that, despite Earnshaw's theorem, nanomagnets can be stably levitated in an external static magnetic field owing to quantum mechanical principles. The quantum angular momentum of electrons, which also causes magnetism, is accountable for this mechanism. Already in 1842, British mathematician Samuel Earnshaw proved that there is no stable c...

TMD Technologies Limited (TMD) has been invited to exhibit at the forthcoming National Quantum Technologies Showcase in London on the 22nd November 2017. The invitation to attend this important event emphasises TMD’s innovative background and scientific expertise, and is a result of TMD’s collaboration with academic and ultra hi-tech industry partners to realise the commercialisation of quantum 2.0 technologies.

Physicists have shown that superconducting circuits can function as piston-like mechanical quantum engines. The new perspective may help researchers design quantum computers and other devices with improved efficiencies. The physicists, Kewin Sachtleben, Kahio T. Mazon, and Luis G. C. Rego at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianópolis, Brazil, have published a paper on their work on superconducting qubits in a recent iss...

JILA physicists have created an entirely new design for an atomic clock, in which strontium atoms are packed into a tiny 3D cube at 1,000 times the density of previous 1D clocks. In doing so, they are the first to harness the ultra-controlled behavior of a so-called “quantum gas” to make a practical measurement device. With so many atoms completely immobilised in place, JILA’s cubic quantum gas clock sets a r...