Transistors are fundamental to microchips and modern electronics. Invented by Bardeen and Brattain in 1947, their development is one of the 20th century’s key scientific milestones. Transistors work by controlling electric current using an electric field, which requires semiconductors. Unlike metals, semiconductors have fewer free electrons and an energy band gap that makes it harder to excite electrons.

Doping introduces charge carriers, enabling current flow under an electric field. This allows for nonlinear current-voltage behavior, making signal amplification or switching possible, as in p–n junctions. Metals, by contrast, have too many free electrons that quickly redistribute to cancel external fields, preventing controlled current flow—hence, they can’t be used as traditional transistors.

However, recent advances show promise in ultrathin superconducting metals as potential transistor materials. When cooled below a critical temperature, these materials carry current with zero resistance. This behavior arises from the formation of Cooper pairs—electrons bound by lattice vibrations—that condense into a coherent quantum state, immune to scattering and energy loss.

IN A NUTSHELL 🔬 Researchers have developed QNodeOS, an innovative operating system that unifies different quantum computing technologies. 🌐 QNodeOS features two main units, the CNPU and QNPU, which simplify the management of diverse quantum devices through a single interface. 🔑 The QDriver acts as a translator, converting universal instructions into specific commands for various

Using advanced computational modeling, a research team led by the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the Instituto Superior Técnico at the University of Lisbon, has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the “quantum vacuum”—a state once assumed to be empty, but which quantum physics predicts is full of virtual electron-positron pairs.

Excitingly, these simulations recreate a bizarre phenomenon predicted by quantum physics, known as “vacuum four-wave mixing.” This states that the combined electromagnetic field of three focused laser pulses can polarize the virtual electron-positron pairs of a vacuum, causing photons to bounce off each other like billiard balls—generating a fourth laser beam in a “light from darkness” process. These events could act as a probe of new physics at extremely high intensities.

“This is not just an academic curiosity—it is a major step toward experimental confirmation of quantum effects that until now have been mostly theoretical,” said study co-author Professor Peter Norreys, Department of Physics, University of Oxford.

The entry of quantum computers into society is currently hindered by their sensitivity to disturbances in the environment. Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and Aalto University and the University of Helsinki in Finland, now present a new type of exotic quantum material, and a method that uses magnetism to create stability.

This breakthrough can make quantum computers significantly more resilient—paving the way for them to be robust enough to tackle quantum calculations in practice.

The paper, “Topological Zero Modes and Correlation Pumping in an Engineered Kondo Lattice,” is published in Physical Review Letters.