NEWSROOM

Researchers in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a machine learning framework that can predict with quantum-level accuracy how materials respond to electric fields, up to the scale of a million atoms – vastly accelerating simulations beyond quantum mechanical methods, which can model only a few hundred atoms at a time.

Quantum materials exhibit remarkable emergent properties when they are excited by external sources. However, these excited states decay rapidly once the excitation is removed, limiting their practical applications. A team of researchers from Harvard University and the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have now demonstrated an approach to stabilise these fleeting states and probe their quantum behaviour using bright X-ray flashes from the X-ray free electron laser SwissFEL at PSI. T

Using advanced computational modelling, a research team led by the University of Oxford has achieved the first-ever real-time, three-dimensional simulations of how intense laser beams alter the ‘quantum vacuum’—a state once assumed to be empty, but which quantum physics predicts is full of virtual electron-positron pairs.

In hyper-entanglement, two characteristics of a particle pair are correlated. As a simple analogy, this would be like a set of twins separated at birth having both the same names and same types of cars: The two traits are correlated between the twins. In the new study, Endres and his team were able to hyper-entangle pairs of atoms such that their individual states of motion and their individual electronic states—their internal energy levels—were correlated among the atoms.

According to a study published in Advanced Functional Materials, the refined technique can bypass the high-temperature annealing and generates higher-purity diamond films than the original substrates. Moreover, the substrate sustains minimal damage in the process and can be reused, making the whole process resource-efficient and scalable.

The work is set to open new avenues for the study of the exotic physics arising from the interplay of interactions and a magnetic field. This includes, for example, microscopic studies of the fractional quantum Hall effect and its properties such as anyonic excitations, long-range entanglement and topological order. These phenomena offer the potential to deepen our understanding of fundamental quantum physics while also paving the way for practical applications, for example i