Scientists from the G7 nations and Australia signed an “unprecedented agreement” regarding quantum technology on Wednesday, France’s national metrology lab told AFP.
The deal between laboratories involved in the science of measurement hopes to establish benchmarks regarding progress in areas such as quantum computers.
The field has seen leading tech giants claim breakthroughs in recent years that have later been questioned by researchers.
With the rise of quantum computers, the security of our existing communication systems is at risk. Quantum computers will be able to break many of the encryption methods used in current communication systems. To counter this, scientists are developing quantum communication systems, which utilize quantum mechanics to offer stronger security. A crucial building block of these systems is a single-photon source: a device that generates only one light particle at a time.
These photons, carrying quantum information, are then sent through optical fibers. For quantum communication systems to work, it is essential that single photons are injected into optical fibers with extremely low loss.
In conventional systems, single-photon emitters, like quantum dots and rare-earth (RE) element ions, are placed outside the fiber. These photons then must be guided to enter the fiber. However, not all photons make it into the fibers, causing high transmission loss. For practical quantum communication systems, it is necessary to achieve a high-coupling and channeling efficiency between the optical fiber and the emitter.
The world is filled with rotating objects—gyroscopes, magnetic spins, and more recently, qubits in quantum computers. For example, the atomic nuclei in our bodies precess at megahertz frequencies inside NMR machines. In practice, it is often desirable to return such a rotating system precisely to its starting point. At first glance, this seems impossible: after an elaborate sequence of twists and wobbles, how could one possibly retrace the path back to the origin?
The astonishing answer is that it is always possible. No matter how tangled the history of rotations, there exists a simple recipe: rescale the driving force and apply it twice. A single application is never sufficient, but applying this doubled, rescaled force guarantees an exact return. Under this operation, the spin—or the qubit, or any rotor—will unfailingly come home.
This discovery was made by Distinguished Professor Tsvi Tlusty from the Department of Physics at UNIST and Jean-Pierre Eckmann from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Their study, published in Physical Review Letters on October 1, 2025, reveals that, despite their apparent complexity, rotations conceal a fundamental order.
A glittering hunk of crystal gets its iridescence from a highly regular atomic structure. Frank Wilczek, the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physics, proposed quantum systems––like groups of particles––could construct themselves in the same way, but in time instead of space. He dubbed such systems time crystals, defining them by their lowest possible energy state, which perpetually repeats movements without external energy input. Time crystals were experimentally proved to exist in 2016.
Materials scientists can learn a lot about a sample material by shooting lasers at it. With nonlinear optical microscopy—a specialized imaging technique that looks for a change in the color of intense laser light—researchers can collect data on how the light interacts with the sample, and through time-consuming and sometimes expensive analyses, characterize the material’s structure and other properties.
Now, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed a computational framework that can interpret the nonlinear optical microscopy images to characterize the material in microscopic detail.
The team has published its approach in the journal Optica.
Quantum information systems, systems that process, store or transmit information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could, in principle, outperform classical systems in some optimization, computational, sensing, and learning tasks. An important aspect of quantum information science is the reliable quantification of quantum states in a system, to verify that they match desired (i.e., target) states.
People tend to think of quantum materials—whose properties arise from quantum mechanical effects—as exotic curiosities. But some quantum materials have become a ubiquitous part of our computer hard drives, TV screens, and medical devices. Still, the vast majority of quantum materials never accomplish much outside of the lab.
What makes certain quantum materials commercial successes and others commercially irrelevant? If researchers knew, they could direct their efforts toward more promising materials—a big deal since they may spend years studying a single material.
Now, MIT researchers have developed a system for evaluating the scale-up potential of quantum materials. Their framework combines a material’s quantum behavior with its cost, supply chain resilience, environmental footprint, and other factors.
Weather forecasting is a powerful tool. During hurricane season, for instance, meteorologists create computer simulations to forecast how these destructive storms form and where they might travel, which helps prevent damage to coastal communities.
When you’re trying to forecast space weather, rather than storms on Earth, creating these simulations gets a little more complex.
To simulate space weather, you would need to fit the Sun, the planets, and the vast empty space between them in a virtual environment, also known as a simulation box, where all the calculations would take place.
