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Category: computing – Page 16

Uniting the light spectrum on a single microchip

Focused laser-like light that covers a wide range of frequencies is highly desirable for many scientific studies and for many applications, for instance, quality control of manufacturing semiconductor electronic chips. But creating such broadband and coherent light has been difficult to achieve with anything but bulky, energy-hungry tabletop devices.

Now, a Caltech team led by Alireza Marandi, a professor of electrical engineering and applied physics at Caltech, has created a tiny device capable of producing an unusually wide range of laser-light frequencies with ultra-high efficiency—all on a microchip. The work has potential in areas ranging from communications and imaging to spectroscopy, where the light would aid the detection of atoms and molecules in various settings.

The researchers describe the new nanophotonic device and approach in a paper that appears in the journal Nature Photonics. The lead author of the paper, “Multi-Octave Frequency Comb from an Ultra-Low-Threshold Nanophotonic Parametric Oscillator,” is Ryoto Sekine (Ph. D.), who completed the work while a graduate student in Marandi’s lab.

DNA cassette tapes could solve global data storage problems

Our increasingly digitized world has a data storage problem. Hard drives and other storage media are reaching their limits, and we are creating data faster than we can store it. Fortunately, we don’t have to look too far for a solution, because nature already has a powerful storage medium with DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). It is this genetic material that Xingyu Jiang at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China and colleagues are using to create DNA storage cassettes.

Nano-switch achieves first directed, gated flow of excitons

A new nanostructure acts like a wire and switch that can, for the first time, control and direct the flow of quantum quasiparticles called excitons at room temperature.

The transistor-like switch developed by University of Michigan engineers could speed up or even enable circuits that run on excitons instead of electricity—paving the way for a new class of devices.

Because they have no , excitons have the potential to move without the losses that come with moving electrically charged particles like electrons. These losses drive cell phones and computers to generate heat during use.

Narrow-linewidth laser on a chip sets new standard for frequency purity

A record-breaking development in laser technology could help support the development of smaller, cheaper, more easily-fabricated optical and quantum technologies, its inventors say.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow have designed and built a narrow-linewidth laser on a single, fully integrated microchip that achieves the best performance ever recorded in semiconductor lasers of its type.

It could help overcome many of the barriers which have prevented previous generations of this type of monolithic semiconductor from being more widely adopted.

Rice research team on quest to engineer computing systems from living cells

Rice University biosciences professor Matthew Bennett has received a $1.99 million grant from the National Science Foundation to lead research on engineered bacterial consortia that could form the basis of biological computing systems. The four-year project will also involve co-principal investigators Kirstin Matthews, Caroline Ajo-Franklin and Anastasios Kyrillidis from Rice along with Krešimir Josić from the University of Houston. The research team aims to develop platforms that integrate microbial sensing and communication with electronic networks, paving the way for computing systems constructed from living cells instead of traditional silicon-based hardware.

The project highlights the growing potential of synthetic biology, where microbes are examined not just as living organisms but as processors of information. If successful, Bennett’s research could accelerate medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring and the development of next-generation computing applications.

“Microbes are remarkable information processors, and we want to understand how to connect them into networks that behave intelligently,” Bennett said. “By integrating biology with electronics, we hope to create a new class of computing platforms that can adapt, learn and respond to their environments.”

The Structure And Interpretation Of Quantum Programs

Quantum computers promise revolutionary processing power, but realising this potential requires fundamentally new approaches to programming, and a team led by David Wakeham from Torsor Labs now presents a radical departure from conventional methods. The researchers introduce a programming model based on ‘props and ops’, propositions and operators, which replaces the traditional ‘states and gates’ approach with a framework rooted in operator algebra. This innovative system provides a concise and representation-agnostic foundation for quantum programming, effectively rebuilding core concepts like the Bloch sphere from algebraic principles, and offering a novel way to express and manipulate quantum information. By establishing a robust algebraic substrate, the work paves the way for developing high-level quantum languages and, ultimately, practical software applications that can harness the full power of quantum computation.

Researchers have established a new foundation for quantum computing that replaces traditional programming methods with a system based on operator algebra, offering a more versatile and universal approach to building and programming quantum computers.

Ringing black hole confirms Einstein and Hawking’s predictions

A decade ago, scientists first detected ripples in the fabric of space-time, called gravitational waves, from the collision of two black holes. Now, thanks to improved technology and a bit of luck, a newly detected black hole merger is providing the clearest evidence yet of how black holes work—and, in the process, offering long-sought confirmation of fundamental predictions by Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

The new measurements were made by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), with analyses led by astrophysicists Maximiliano Isi and Will Farr of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City. The results reveal insights into the properties of black holes and the fundamental nature of space-time, hinting at how quantum physics and Einstein’s general relativity fit together.

“This is the clearest view yet of the nature of black holes,” says Isi, who is also an assistant professor at Columbia University. “We’ve found some of the strongest evidence yet that astrophysical black holes are the black holes predicted from Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.”

‘More than just an image’: New algorithm can extract hyperspectral info from conventional photos

Professionals in agriculture, defense and security, environmental monitoring, food quality analysis, industrial quality control, and medical diagnostics could benefit from a patent-pending innovation that opens new possibilities of conventional photography for optical spectroscopy and hyperspectral imaging.

Young Kim, Purdue University professor, University Faculty Scholar and Showalter Faculty Scholar, and postdoctoral research associate Semin Kwon of the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering created an algorithm that recovers detailed spectral information from photographs taken by conventional cameras. The research combines computer vision, color science and optical spectroscopy.

“A photograph is more than just an image; it contains abundant hyperspectral information,” Kim said. “We are one of the pioneering research groups to integrate computational spectrometry and spectroscopic analyses for biomedical and other applications.”

Exotic phase of matter realized on quantum processor

Phases of matter are the basic states that matter can take—like water that can occur in a liquid or ice phase. Traditionally, these phases are defined under equilibrium conditions, where the system is stable over time. But nature allows for stranger possibilities: new phases that emerge only when a system is driven out of equilibrium. In a new study published in Nature, a research team shows that quantum computers offer an unparalleled way to explore those exotic states of matter.

Unlike conventional phases of , the so-called nonequilibrium quantum phases are defined by their dynamical and time-evolving properties—a behavior that cannot be captured by traditional equilibrium thermodynamics.

One particularly rich class of nonequilibrium states arises in Floquet systems— that are periodically driven in time. This rhythmic driving can give rise to entirely new forms of order that cannot exist under any equilibrium conditions, revealing phenomena that are fundamentally beyond the reach of conventional phases of matter.

What Is Superposition and Why Is It Important?

Imagine touching the surface of a pond at two different points at the same time. Waves would spread outward from each point, eventually overlapping to form a more complex pattern. This is a superposition of waves. Similarly, in quantum science, objects such as electrons and photons have wavelike properties that can combine and become what is called superposed.

While waves on the surface of a pond are formed by the movement of water, quantum waves are mathematical. They are expressed as equations that describe the probabilities of an object existing in a given state or having a particular property. The equations might provide information on the probability of an electron moving at a specific speed or residing in a certain location. When an electron is in superposition, its different states can be thought of as separate outcomes, each with a particular probability of being observed. An electron might be said to be in a superposition of two different velocities or in two places at once. Understanding superposition may help to advance quantum technology such as quantum computers.

One of the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, superposition explains how a quantum state can be represented as the sum of two or more states.

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