Lifeboat Foundation

It is a common hack to stretch a balloon out to make it easier to inflate. When the balloon stretches, the width crosswise shrinks to the size of a string. Noah Stocek, a PhD student collaborating with Western University physicist Giovanni Fanchini, has developed a new nanomaterial that demonstrates the opposite of this phenomenon.

Working at Interface Science Western, home of the Tandetron Accelerator Facility, Stocek, and Fanchini formulated two-dimensional nanosheets of tungsten semi-carbide (or W2C, a chemical compound containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms) which when stretched in one direction, expand perpendicular to the applied force. This structural design is known as auxetics.

Generally, it’s advised not to compare apples to oranges. However, in the field of topology, a branch of mathematics, this comparison is necessary. Apples and oranges, it turns out, are said to be topologically the same since they both lack a hole – in contrast to doughnuts or coffee cups, for instance, which both have one (the handle in the case of the cup) and, hence, are topologically equal.

In a more abstract way, quantum systems in physics can also have a specific apple or doughnut topology, which manifests itself in the energy states and motion of particles. Researchers are very interested in such systems as their topology makes them robust against disorder and other disturbing influences, which are always present in natural physical systems.

Things get particularly interesting if, in addition, the particles in such a system interact, meaning that they attract or repel each other, like electrons in solids. Studying topology and interactions together in solids, however, is extremely difficult. A team of researchers at ETH led by Tilman Esslinger has now managed to detect topological effects in an artificial solid, in which the interactions can be switched on or off using magnetic fields. Their results, which have just been published in the scientific journal Science, could be used in quantum technologies in the future.

Researchers Kazuaki Takasan and Kyogo Kawaguchi of the University of Tokyo with Kyosuke Adachi of RIKEN, Japan, have demonstrated that ferromagnetism, an ordered state of atoms, can be induced by increasing particle motility and that repulsive forces between atoms are sufficient to maintain it.

The discovery not only extends the concept of active matter to quantum systems but also contributes to the development of novel technologies that rely on the magnetic properties of particles, such as magnetic memory and quantum computing. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Research.

Flocking birds, swarming bacteria, cellular flows. These are all examples of active matter, a state in which individual agents, such as birds, bacteria, or cells, self-organize. The agents change from a disordered to an ordered state in what is called a “phase transition.” As a result, they move together in an organized fashion without an external controller.

Calabi-Yau manifolds, 6D shapes that are crucial to string theory, were named after the late Eugenio Calabi (right), who proposed the shapes in the 1950s, and Shing-Tung Yau, who in the 1970s set out to prove Calabi wrong but ended up doing the opposite.

Using machine learning, string theorists are finally showing how microscopic configurations of extra dimensions translate into sets of elementary particles — though not yet those of our universe.

An international collaboration of researchers, led by Philip Walther at University of Vienna, have achieved a significant breakthrough in quantum technology, with the successful demonstration of quantum interference among several single photons using a novel resource-efficient platform. The work published in the prestigious journal Science Advances represents a notable advancement in optical quantum computing that paves the way for more scalable quantum technologies.

Interference among photons, a fundamental phenomenon in quantum optics, serves as a cornerstone of optical quantum computing. It involves harnessing the properties of light, such as its wave-particle duality, to induce interference patterns, enabling the encoding and processing of quantum information.

In traditional multi-photon experiments, spatial encoding is commonly employed, wherein photons are manipulated in different spatial paths to induce interference. These experiments require intricate setups with numerous components, making them resource-intensive and challenging to scale.

In just 2 hours, small metal robots can capture most nanoscopic plastic particles from a sample of water.

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Researchers have developed a new technique that can “reprogram” magnetic cilia to move in new directions as needed. Magnetic cilia – an artificial hair-like structure containing embedded magnetic particles – are used frequently in soft robots, transporting objects and mixing liquids.

Physicists have proposed modifications to the infamous Schrödinger’s cat paradox that could help explain why quantum particles can exist in more than one state simultaneously, while large objects (like the universe) seemingly cannot.

Entanglement is a form of correlation between quantum objects, such as particles at the atomic scale. The laws of classical physics cannot explain this uniquely quantum phenomenon, yet it is one of the properties that explain the macroscopic behavior of quantum systems.

Because entanglement is central to the way quantum systems work, understanding it better could give scientists a deeper sense of how information is stored and processed efficiently in such systems.

Qubits, or quantum bits, are the building blocks of a quantum computer. However, it is extremely difficult to make specific entangled states in many-qubit systems, let alone investigate them. There are also a variety of entangled states, and telling them apart can be challenging.