MIT team creates ultracold molecules
The air around us is a chaotic superhighway of molecules whizzing through space and constantly colliding with each other at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. Such erratic molecular behavior is...
View ArticleQuantum physics meets genetic engineering
Researchers use engineered viruses to provide quantum-based enhancement of energy transport.
View ArticleQuantum materials: A new paradigm for computing?
Moore’s Law enabled smaller, cheaper, faster electronic devices for five decades, but it will take a new paradigm like quantum materials to make the next technological leap, Materials Processing Center...
View ArticleScientists detect a quantum crystal of electrons and “watch” it melt
For the first time, MIT physicists have observed a highly ordered crystal of electrons in a semiconducting material and documented its melting, much like ice thawing into water. The observations...
View ArticleFaculty highlight: Senthil Todadri
Mother nature is like a restless child who fidgets even when at rest, because electrons are never completely at rest, even at the coldest temperatures, says Professor Senthil Todadri, a theoretician in...
View ArticleStars align in test supporting “spooky action at a distance”
Quantum entanglement may appear to be closer to science fiction than anything in our physical reality. But according to the laws of quantum mechanics — a branch of physics that describes the world at...
View ArticleElectrons go superballistic
A new finding by physicists at MIT and in Israel shows that under certain specialized conditions, electrons can speed through a narrow opening in a piece of metal more easily than traditional theory...
View ArticleMapping the effects of crystal defects
New research offers insights into how crystal dislocations — a common type of defect in materials — can affect electrical and heat transport through crystals, at a microscopic, quantum mechanical...
View ArticleExperiments confirm theory of “superballistic” electron flow
When many people try to squeeze through a passageway at the same time, it creates a bottleneck that slows everyone down. It turns out the reverse is true for electrons, which can move through small...
View ArticleA new window into electron behavior
For the first time, physicists have developed a technique that can peer deep beneath the surface of a material to identify the energies and momenta of electrons there.The energy and momentum of these...
View ArticleLight from ancient quasars helps confirm quantum entanglement
Last year, physicists at MIT, the University of Vienna, and elsewhere provided strong support for quantum entanglement, the seemingly far-out idea that two particles, no matter how distant from each...
View ArticleQuantum dots can spit out clone-like photons
In the global quest to develop practical computing and communications devices based on the principles of quantum physics, one potentially useful component has proved elusive: a source of individual...
View ArticleScientists discover fractal patterns in a quantum material
A fractal is any geometric pattern that occurs again and again, at different sizes and scales, within the same object. This “self-similarity” can be seen throughout nature, for example in a snowflake’s...
View ArticleChemists observe “spooky” quantum tunneling
A molecule of ammonia, NH3, typically exists as an umbrella shape, with three hydrogen atoms fanned out in a nonplanar arrangement around a central nitrogen atom. This umbrella structure is very stable...
View ArticleMIT researchers realize “ideal” kagome metal electronic structure
Since 2016, a team of MIT researchers consisting of graduate students Linda Ye and Min Gu Kang, associate professor of physics Joseph G. Checkelsky, and Class of 1947 Career Development Assistant...
View ArticleHow growth of the scientific enterprise influenced a century of quantum physics
Austrian quantum theorist Erwin Schrödinger first used the term “entanglement,” in 1935, to describe the mind-bending phenomenon in which the actions of two distant particles are bound up with each...
View ArticleExploring new paths to future quantum electronics
When ultrathin layered materials are coupled with other quantum materials having different properties, the resulting interface could produce a new quantum phenomenon — and new properties of the hybrid...
View ArticleNewly observed phenomenon could lead to new quantum devices
An exotic physical phenomenon known as a Kohn anomaly has been found for the first time in an unexpected type of material by researchers at MIT and elsewhere. They say the finding could provide new...
View ArticleLearning during lockdown
Despite the extraordinary pressures of adapting to the realities of the Covid-19 pandemic, learners have increasingly sought out MITx courses as a way to stay intellectually active, work toward...
View ArticleFor Thomas Searles, a passion for people and science at HBCUs and MIT
When Thomas Searles was assigned a book report in the first grade, he initially had trouble choosing a topic. He really didn’t like fiction books. After a bit of indecision, he chose to write his...
View ArticleCracking the secrets of an emerging branch of physics
Thanh Nguyen is in the habit of breaking down barriers. Take languages, for instance: Nguyen, a third-year doctoral candidate in nuclear science and engineering (NSE), wanted “to connect with other...
View ArticleExplained: Quantum engineering
Since the 1940s, classical computers have improved at breakneck speed. Today you can buy a wristwatch with more computing power than the state-of-the-art, room-sized computer from half a century ago....
View ArticleA cool advance in thermoelectric conversion
More than two-thirds of the energy used worldwide is ultimately ejected as “waste heat.” Within that reservoir of discarded energy lies a great and largely untapped opportunity, claim scientists in...
View ArticleNew type of atomic clock keeps time even more precisely
Atomic clocks are the most precise timekeepers in the world. These exquisite instruments use lasers to measure the vibrations of atoms, which oscillate at a constant frequency, like many microscopic...
View ArticlePhysicists bring human-scale object to near standstill, reaching a quantum state
To the human eye, most stationary objects appear to be just that — still, and completely at rest. Yet if we were handed a quantum lens, allowing us to see objects at the scale of individual atoms, what...
View ArticleNew material could be two superconductors in one
MIT physicists and colleagues have demonstrated an exotic form of superconductivity in a new material the team synthesized only about a year ago. Although predicted in the 1960s, until now this type of...
View ArticlePhysicists watch as ultracold atoms form a crystal of quantum tornadoes
The world we experience is governed by classical physics. How we move, where we are, and how fast we’re going are all determined by the classical assumption that we can only exist in one place at any...
View ArticlePhysicists discover “secret sauce” behind exotic properties of a new quantum...
MIT physicists and colleagues have discovered the “secret sauce” behind some of the exotic properties of a new quantum material that has transfixed physicists due to those properties, which include...
View ArticleFast-tracking the search for energy-efficient materials
Born into a family of architects, Nina Andrejević loved creating drawings of her home and other buildings while a child in Serbia. She and her twin sister shared this passion, along with an appetite...
View ArticlePhysicists steer chemical reactions by magnetic fields and quantum interference
Physicists in the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms (CUA) have developed a new approach to control the outcome of chemical reactions. This is traditionally done using temperature and chemical...
View ArticleSeeing an elusive magnetic effect through the lens of machine learning
Superconductors have long been considered the principal approach for realizing electronics without resistivity. In the past decade, a new family of quantum materials, “topological materials,” has...
View ArticleMining valuable insights from diamonds
If Changhao Li were to trace the origins of his love of nature, he would point to the time when he was 9, observing the night sky from his childhood home in the small town of Jinan, China. “At that...
View ArticlePhysicists see electron whirlpools for the first time
Though they are discrete particles, water molecules flow collectively as liquids, producing streams, waves, whirlpools, and other classic fluid phenomena.Not so with electricity. While an electric...
View ArticlePhysicists harness quantum “time reversal” to measure vibrating atoms
The quantum vibrations in atoms hold a miniature world of information. If scientists can accurately measure these atomic oscillations, and how they evolve over time, they can hone the precision of...
View ArticleScientists capture first-ever view of a hidden quantum phase in a 2D crystal
The development of high-speed strobe-flash photography in the 1960s by the late MIT professor Harold “Doc” Edgerton allowed us to visualize events too fast for the eye — a bullet piercing an apple, or...
View ArticleA faster experiment to find and study topological materials
Topological materials, an exotic class of materials whose surfaces exhibit different electrical or functional properties than their interiors, have been a frontier of research in the past decade — a...
View ArticleMIT researchers use quantum computing to observe entanglement
For the first time, researchers at MIT, Caltech, Harvard University, and elsewhere sent quantum information across a quantum system in what could be understood as traversing a wormhole. Though this...
View ArticlePhysicists observe rare resonance in molecules for the first time
If she hits just the right pitch, a singer can shatter a wine glass. The reason is resonance. While the glass may vibrate slightly in response to most acoustic tones, a pitch that resonates with the...
View ArticleEngineers discover a new way to control atomic nuclei as “qubits”
In principle, quantum-based devices such as computers and sensors could vastly outperform conventional digital technologies for carrying out many complex tasks. But developing such devices in practice...
View ArticleQuARC 2023 explores the leading edge in quantum information and science
The second QSEC Annual Research Conference (QuARC) brought together MIT student and postdoctoral researchers, staff, faculty, and industry partners for a two-day exploration of the leading edge in...
View ArticleLearning to design with atoms and molecules
MIT undergraduates are learning about nanoscale science and engineering from individual atoms up to full-scale functional systems, and they’re doing it hands-on at MIT.nano.In class 6.2540...
View ArticleThree Spanish MIT physics postdocs receive Botton Foundation fellowships
Three Spanish MIT postdocs, Luis Antonio Benítez, Carolina Cuesta-Lazaro, and Fernando RomeroLópez, were chosen by the Department of Physics as the first cohort of Mauricio and Carlota Botton...
View ArticleProfessor Emeritus Roman Jackiw, “giant of theoretical physics,” dies at 83
Eminent theoretical physicist and Dirac MedalistRoman Jackiw, MIT professor emeritus and holder of the Department of Physics’ Jerrold Zacharias chair, died June 14 at age 83. He was a member of the MIT...
View ArticleInternational team reports powerful tool for studying, tuning atomically thin...
Physicists have been riveted by systems composed of materials only one or a few layers of atoms thick. When a few sheets of these two-dimensional materials are stacked together, a geometric pattern...
View ArticleNew quantum magnet unleashes electronics potential
Some of our most important everyday items, like computers, medical equipment, stereos, generators, and more, work because of magnets. We know what happens when computers become more powerful, but what...
View ArticleSensing and controlling microscopic spin density in materials
Electronic devices typically use the charge of electrons, but spin — their other degree of freedom — is starting to be exploited. Spin defects make crystalline materials highly useful for quantum-based...
View ArticleCanceling noise to improve quantum devices
For years, researchers have tried various ways to coax quantum bits — or qubits, the basic building blocks of quantum computers — to remain in their quantum state for ever-longer times, a key step in...
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MIT researchers observe a hallmark quantum behavior in bouncing droplets
In our everyday classical world, what you see is what you get. A ball is just a ball, and when lobbed through the air, its trajectory is straightforward and clear. But if that ball were shrunk to the...
View ArticleTechnique could improve the sensitivity of quantum sensing devices
In quantum sensing, atomic-scale quantum systems are used to measure electromagnetic fields, as well as properties like rotation, acceleration, and distance, far more precisely than classical sensors...
View ArticleMIT researchers discover “neutronic molecules”
Neutrons are subatomic particles that have no electric charge, unlike protons and electrons. That means that while the electromagnetic force is responsible for most of the interactions between...
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