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Quantum mechanics has long classified particles into just two distinct types: fermions and bosons.

Now physicists from Rice University in the US have found a third type might be possible after all, at least mathematically speaking. Known as a paraparticles, their behavior could imply the existence of elementary particles nobody has ever considered.

“We determined that new types of particles we never knew of before are possible,” says Kaden Hazzard, who with co-author Zhiyuan Wang formulated a theory to demonstrate how objects that weren’t fermions or bosons could exist in physical reality without breaking any known laws.

The mention of gravity and quantum in the same sentence often elicits discomfort from theoretical physicists, yet the effects of gravity on quantum information systems cannot be ignored. In a recently announced collaboration between the University of Connecticut, Google Quantum AI, and the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA), researchers explored the interplay of these two domains, quantifying the nontrivial effects of gravity on transmon qubits.

Led by Alexander Balatsky of UConn’s Quantum Initiative, along with Google’s Pedram Roushan and NORDITA researchers Patrick Wong and Joris Schaltegger, the study focuses on the gravitational redshift. This phenomenon slightly detunes the energy levels of qubits based on their position in a gravitational field. While negligible for a single qubit, this effect becomes measurable when scaled.

While quantum computers can effectively be protected from electromagnetic radiation, barring any innovative antigravitic devices expansive enough to hold a quantum computer, quantum technology cannot at this point in time be shielded from the effects of gravity. The team demonstrated that gravitational interactions create a universal dephasing channel, disrupting the coherence required for quantum operations. However, these same interactions could also be used to develop highly sensitive gravitational sensors.

Continue reading “UConn, NORDITA, and Google Reveal Gravity As Both Friend and Foe of Quantum Technology” »

The mention of gravity and quantum in the same sentence often elicits discomfort from theoretical physicists, yet the effects of gravity on quantum information systems cannot be ignored. In a recently announced collaboration between the University of Connecticut, Google Quantum AI, and the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA), researchers explored the interplay of these two domains, quantifying the nontrivial effects of gravity on transmon qubits.

Led by Alexander Balatsky of UConn’s Quantum Initiative, along with Google’s Pedram Roushan and NORDITA researchers Patrick Wong and Joris Schaltegger, the study focuses on the gravitational redshift. This phenomenon slightly detunes the energy levels of qubits based on their position in a gravitational field. While negligible for a single qubit, this effect becomes measurable when scaled.

While quantum computers can effectively be protected from electromagnetic radiation, barring any innovative antigravitic devices expansive enough to hold a quantum computer, quantum technology cannot at this point in time be shielded from the effects of gravity. The team demonstrated that gravitational interactions create a universal dephasing channel, disrupting the coherence required for quantum operations. However, these same interactions could also be used to develop highly sensitive gravitational sensors.

Continue reading “Nvidia’s $3K ‘Digits’ GB10 Supercomputer” »

Quantum computing is getting a lot of attention lately — deservedly so. It’s hard not to get excited about the new capabilities that quantum computing could bring. This new generation of computers will solve extremely complex problems by sorting through billions upon billions of wrong answers to arrive at the correct solutions. We could put these capabilities to work designing new medications or optimizing global infrastructure on an enormous scale.

But in the excitement surrounding quantum computing, what often gets lost is that computing is just one element of the larger quantum technologies story. We are entering a new quantum era in which we are learning to manipulate and control the quantum states of matter down to the level of individual particles. This has unlocked a wealth of new possibilities across multiple fields. For instance, by entangling two photons of light, we can generate a communications channel that is impervious to eavesdropping. Or we can put the highly sensitive nature of quantum particles to work detecting phenomena we have never been able to sense before.

We call this new era of innovation Quantum 2.0, distinguishing it from the Quantum 1.0 era of the last 100 years. Quantum 1.0 gave us some of the most remarkable inventions of the 20^th century, from the transistor to the laser. But as we transition to Quantum 2.0, we are reconceptualizing the way we communicate and the way we sense the world, as well as the way we compute. What’s more, we’re only just beginning to realize Quantum 2.0’s full potential.

Quantum computers require extreme cooling to perform reliable calculations. One of the challenges preventing quantum computers from entering society is the difficulty of freezing the qubits to temperatures close to absolute zero.

Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and the University of Maryland, U.S., have engineered a new type of refrigerator that can autonomously cool superconducting qubits to record low temperatures, paving the way for more reliable quantum computation.

Quantum computers have the potential to revolutionize fundamental technologies in various sectors of society, with applications in medicine, energy, encryption, AI, and logistics. While the building blocks of a classical computer—bits—can take a value of either 0 or 1, the most common building blocks in quantum computers—qubits—can have a value of 0 and 1 simultaneously.

Scientists have used high-energy particle collisions to peer inside protons, the particles that sit inside the nuclei of all atoms. This has revealed for the first time that quarks and gluons, the building blocks of protons, experience the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.

Scientists at Penn Engineering have developed a quantum sensing method that detects signals from individual atoms.

From the early days of quantum mechanics, scientists have thought that all particles can be categorized into one of two groups—bosons or fermions—based on their behavior.

However, new research by Rice University physicist Kaden Hazzard and former Rice graduate student Zhiyuan Wang shows the possibility of particles that are neither bosons nor fermions. Their study, published in Nature, mathematically demonstrates the potential existence of paraparticles that have long been thought impossible.

“We determined that new types of particles we never knew of before are possible,” said Hazzard, associate professor of physics and astronomy.

Amid the many mysteries of quantum physics, subatomic particles don’t always follow the rules of the physical world. They can exist in two places at once, pass through solid barriers and even communicate across vast distances instantaneously. These behaviors may seem impossible, but in the quantum realm, scientists are exploring an array of properties once thought impossible.

In a new study, physicists at Brown University have now observed a novel class of quantum particles called fractional excitons, which behave in unexpected ways and could significantly expand scientists’ understanding of the quantum realm.

“Our findings point toward an entirely new class of quantum particles that carry no overall charge but follow unique quantum statistics,” said Jia Li, an associate professor of physics at Brown.