Scientists have developed an ultra-thin, paper-like LED that emits a warm, sunlike glow, promising to revolutionize how we light up our homes, devices, and workplaces. By engineering a balance of red, yellow-green, and blue quantum dots, the researchers achieved light quality remarkably close to natural sunlight, improving color accuracy and reducing eye strain.
Researchers have built the world’s most sensitive table-top interferometer to study quantum gravity and space-time fluctuations.
A consortium of German researchers has successfully transmitted individual photons from a moving aircraft, captured them in a mobile ground station, and verified their quantum states.
The experiment, a key part of Germany’s QuNET initiative, marks a critical step towards building a global, tap-proof quantum communication network.
The research team successfully measured various quantum channels between the aircraft and the ground, sent the light particles to a sophisticated ion trap, and tested technologies vital for quantum key distribution (QKD).
Quantum defects are tiny imperfections in solid crystal lattices that can trap individual electrons and their “spin” (i.e., the internal angular momentum of particles). These defects are central to the functioning of various quantum technologies, including quantum sensors, computers and communication systems.
Reliably predicting and controlling the behavior of quantum defects is thus very important, as it could pave the way for the development of better performing quantum systems tailored for specific applications. A property closely linked to the dependability of quantum technologies is the so-called spin readout contrast, which essentially determines how clear it is to distinguish between two different spin states in a system.
Researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), the HUN-REN Wigner Research Center for Physics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutes recently showed that strain engineering (i.e., stretching or compressing materials) could be used to control how quantum defects behave and enhance spin readout contrast in quantum systems.
Researchers from EeroQ, the quantum computing company pioneering electron-on-helium technology, have published a paper, titled “Sensing and Control of Single Trapped Electrons Above 1 Kelvin,” in Physical Review X that details a significant milestone: the first demonstration of controlling and detecting individual electrons trapped on superfluid helium at temperatures above 1 Kelvin. This work was achieved using on-chip superconducting microwave circuits, a method compatible with existing quantum hardware.
Quantum computers today typically require operation at ultra-low temperatures near 10 millikelvin, creating severe challenges in scaling due to heat dissipation. By showing that individual electrons can be trapped and controlled at temperatures more than 100 times higher (above 1 Kelvin), EeroQ’s results open a new pathway toward larger and more practical quantum processors.
The findings also validate long-standing theoretical predictions that electrons on helium can provide exceptionally pure and long-lived qubits, while reducing the extreme cooling demands that limit other approaches.
When optical materials (molecules or solid-state semiconductors) are embedded in tiny photonic boxes, known as optical microcavities, they form hybrid light-matter states known as polaritons. Most of the optical properties of polaritons under weak illumination can be understood using textbook classical optics. Now researchers from UC San Diego show that this is not the entire story: there are quantum fluctuations lurking underneath the classical signal and they reveal a great deal about the molecules in question.
Their work redefines the foundations of polaritonics by demonstrating that the optical spectra of these light–matter hybrids, long described by classical optics, in fact bear subtle quantum fingerprints.
Exploiting these signatures allows polaritons to act as sensitive probes of their host materials, opening new directions for polaritonic control, precision sensing, and quantum photonic technologies. Beyond optics, these hidden quantum effects further suggest novel avenues for steering chemical reactivity and advancing polaritonic chemistry.
The world’s most sensitive table-top interferometric system—a miniature version of miles-long gravitational-wave detectors like LIGO—has completed its first science run.
The Quantum Enhanced Space-Time measurement (QUEST) experiment, based in Cardiff University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, aims to uncover the fundamental nature of space-time.
QUEST can measure changes in length 100 trillion times smaller than the width of a human hair and has set a new record for sensitivity in just a three-hour experiment.
Superconductors (materials that conduct electricity without resistance) have fascinated physicists for more than a century. While conventional superconductors are well understood, a new class of materials known as topological superconductors has attracted intense interest in recent years.
These superconductors have been reported to be capable of hosting Majorana quasiparticles, exotic states that could change the field of fault-tolerant quantum computing. Yet many of the fundamental properties of these novel bulk topological superconductors remain relatively unknown, leaving open questions about how their unusual electronic states interact with the underlying crystal lattice.
In a new study conducted by Professor Guo-qing Zheng, along with Kazuaki Matano, S. Takayanagi, K. Ito of Okayama University and Professor H. Nakao of High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), published in Physical Review Letters on August 22, 2025, the researchers report that the doped topological insulator CuxBi2Se3 undergoes tiny but spontaneous distortions in its crystal lattice as it enters the superconducting state.
The neutral-atom platform appears promising for scaling up quantum computers. To solve some of the toughest challenges in physics, chemistry, and other fields, quantum computers will eventually need extremely large numbers of qubits. Unlike classical bits that can only represent a 0 or a 1, qubits
