UK researchers used special optical tweezers to attain quantum entanglement of molecules that could unlock multiple applications in quantum computing.

A six-layer crystal device generates entangled photons efficiently, offering breakthroughs in communication and quantum computing.

MIT researchers have achieved a world-record single-qubit fidelity of 99.998% using fluxonium, a superconducting qubit.

A cryogenic microscope reveals the atomic-scale processes that disrupt the charge-ordered state in a material as the temperature rises.

Many of the exotic materials being investigated for next-generation technologies exhibit charge order, a state in which the electrons arrange themselves into a periodic pattern, such as stripes of high and low electron density. Researchers have now shown that they can track the evolution of this state as it warms up and melts away by using a cryogenic electron microscope [1]. Their experimental approach offers a new way to explore the interactions between different phases of quantum materials, which could inform the development of future electronic and data storage devices.

In certain materials with strongly interacting electrons, charge order appears—usually below room temperature—as an electron density that varies periodically in a pattern of stripes, a checkerboard, or a more complicated 3D structure. Researchers want to understand this phase because it coexists and interacts with other states and properties of the material, many of which are useful for novel devices and technologies. In high-temperature superconductors, for example, charge order is known to suppress the material’s superconducting behavior. In other materials, strong coupling between charge order and ferromagnetism can trigger colossal magnetoresistance, a property that could be exploited in magnetic storage devices.

To develop scalable and reliable quantum computers, engineers and physicists will need to devise effective strategies to mitigate errors in their quantum systems without adding complex additional components. A promising strategy to reduce errors entails the use of so-called dual-type qubits.

These are qubits that can encode quantum information in a system across two different types of quantum states. These qubits could increase the flexibility of quantum computing architectures, while also reducing undesirable crosstalk between qubits and enhancing a system’s operational fidelity.

Researchers at Tsinghua University and other research institutes in China recently realized an entangling gate between dual-type qubits in an experimental setting.