The smallest amount of light you can have is one photon, so dim that it's pretty much invisible to humans. While imperceptible, these tiny blips of energy are useful for carrying quantum information around. Ideally, every ...
Optics & Photonics
Sep 11, 2018
0
236
Everything radiates. Whether it's a car door, a pair of shoes or the cover of a book, anything hotter than absolute zero (i.e., pretty much everything) is constantly shedding radiation in the form of photons, the quantum ...
General Physics
Aug 5, 2019
4
865
Observing the quantum behavior of light is a big part of Alan Migdall's research at the Joint Quantum Institute. Many of his experiments depend on observing light in the form of photons—-the particle complement of light ...
General Physics
Oct 10, 2014
1
0
State-of-the-art quantum devices are not yet large enough to be called full-scale computers. The biggest comprise just a few dozen qubits—a meager count compared to the billions of bits in an ordinary computer's memory. ...
Quantum Physics
Aug 3, 2018
0
405
Deep within solids, individual electrons zip around on a nanoscale highway paved with atoms. For the most part, these electrons avoid one another, kept in separate lanes by their mutual repulsion. But vibrations in the atomic ...
Superconductivity
Jun 26, 2017
3
1408
Randomness governs many things, from the growth of cell colonies and the agglomeration of polymers to the shapes of tendrils that form when you pour cream into a cup of coffee.
Optics & Photonics
Dec 24, 2019
0
463
The smallest pieces of nature—individual particles like electrons, for instance—are pretty much interchangeable. An electron is an electron is an electron, regardless of whether it's stuck in a lab on Earth, bound to ...
Quantum Physics
Oct 15, 2019
3
1375
The quantum world blatantly defies intuitions that we've developed while living among relatively large things, like cars, pennies and dust motes. In the quantum world, tiny particles can maintain a special connection over ...
Quantum Physics
Apr 28, 2020
0
725
Magnetic monopoles, entities with isolated north or south magnetic poles, weren't supposed to exist. If you try to saw a bar magnet in half, all you succeed in getting are two magnets, each with a south and north pole. In ...
General Physics
Aug 9, 2012
15
0
A team of researchers has devised a simple way to tune a hallmark quantum effect in graphene—the material formed from a single layer of carbon atoms—by bathing it in light. Their theoretical work, which was published ...
Quantum Physics
Jan 15, 2018
1
606
