https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A team led by University at Buffalo physicists has found a mathematical solution that shows how a frustrated quantum magnet can transition from ultraslow behavior to ultrafast, highly entangled behavior resembling that of a black hole. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-physicists-math-ultraslow-quantum-magnetism.html Condensed Matter Tue, 22 Sep 2026 18:00:03 EDT news709314001 Researchers in China have extended the lifetime of entanglement in a room-temperature, solid-state system by up to a factor of 240. Led by Shuo Ren and Rui-Jian Liang at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, the team transferred entangled states from the electron spins of solid-state defects to the spins of surrounding atomic nuclei, which are far more resilient to noise. The research has been published in Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-nuclear-swap-room-temperature-entanglement.html Quantum Physics Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:40:08 EDT news709210398 Quantum communication networks consist of several connected nodes that exchange information encoded in quantum states. These networks could potentially enable more secure communications between quantum devices in different locations. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-scientists-teleport-quantum-states-parallel.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:20:06 EDT news709207814 Physicists at the University of Oxford have helped confirm that one of the strangest phenomena in physics—quantum entanglement—occurs even among some of the heaviest and most fleeting particles ever created. The discovery, made using the world's most powerful particle collider at CERN, has been published in Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-physicists-uncover-spooky-quantum-effect.html Quantum Physics Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:12:41 EDT news708599518 Electronic voting, the use of electronic systems to cast, record or count votes, could potentially simplify the process of electing new political leaders or other representatives. While some countries have already started using internet-connected devices or electronic voting machines at polling stations, the trustworthiness, security and anonymity of electronic voting systems are still widely debated. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-quantum-protocols-electronic-voting.html Quantum Physics Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:40:10 EDT news708080473 For decades, physicists have worked to prove the strange predictions of quantum mechanics with real experiments. As quantum computers have grown more powerful, researchers have devised increasingly sophisticated ways to test whether these machines are truly harnessing quantum effects—but every method so far has run into limits. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-game-quantum-advantage-provable-classical.html Quantum Physics Tue, 08 Sep 2026 10:50:01 EDT news708083342 Physicists at the BESIII Collaboration have breathed new life into a decades-old test of one of the Standard Model's most important ideas, using a technique that had gone almost untouched by experimenters for 35 years. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-entangled-particles-revive-year-standard.html General Physics Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:40:10 EDT news707992804 The BESIII Collaboration, led by the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has achieved the world's most precise measurement of the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the Lambda (Λ) hyperon using quantum-entangled Λ–anti-Λ pairs produced in J/ψ decays. The result improves the experimental sensitivity by about three orders of magnitude compared with the previous measurement, providing a new way to probe charge-parity (CP) violation in particles containing strange quarks. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-besiii-world-stringent-limit-lambda.html General Physics Thu, 03 Sep 2026 14:00:17 EDT news707655901 A new study has demonstrated that it is possible to make a network of atoms and photons that could improve how artificial intelligence stores and recalls memories. This network, called a quantum-optical spin glass, works as an associative memory, a form of AI that enables the recall of full memories from partial information—much like how humans can recognize a person's face in a blurred photograph. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-quantum-optical-glass-ai.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 03 Sep 2026 14:00:01 EDT news707657764 Research means asking questions of the universe. For centuries, clever minds have advanced science by devising ingenious experiments designed so their results reveal something about the laws of nature as clearly and unambiguously as possible. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-physics-outperform-human-setups.html General Physics Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:20:06 EDT news707649841 The hidden world of quantum mechanics exists at scales many orders of magnitude smaller than living organisms, yet scientists have long theorized that quantum effects play an important role in biology. Birds' ability to sense magnetic fields during migration is one of the best-known mysteries in this field, with leading theories suggesting that this sensing could be achieved by exploiting quantum entanglement. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-quantum-algorithm-birds-migrate.html Quantum Physics Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:20:07 EDT news707643721 A research group in Japan has demonstrated a world-record 10-channel multiplexed quantum photonic interface based on an integrated waveguide array, a key technology for optically interconnecting multiple quantum computers. The study is published in the journal Optica. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ten-channel-photonic-interface-links.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:00:02 EDT news707477822 Quantum technologies promise secure communication networks, powerful forms of computing and new sensing tools. One of the major challenges, however, is that different quantum systems often operate at different wavelengths of light. Quantum memories, trapped ions and other quantum devices may work best in the ultraviolet or visible range, while long-distance communication over optical fibers works most efficiently at telecommunications wavelengths. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-hollow-core-fiber-platform-quantum.html Optics & Photonics Sun, 30 Aug 2026 09:00:02 EDT news706879144 While quantum computing could be the future, it is currently plagued by finicky hardware. To make the technology practical, researchers must demonstrate that it consistently and continuously works and performs at scale. In a new study, published in Physical Review Letters, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Ion Storage Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, created a robust process for entangling trapped-ion qubits. The result means better building blocks for ion-based quantum computers. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ramped-fields-robust-entanglement-ion.html Quantum Physics Wed, 26 Aug 2026 18:20:06 EDT news706969261 For decades, light has been used to understand the molecular structures of matter. A sample is irradiated with light, and measurements determine the wavelengths at which it is absorbed. Since each molecule absorbs light at very specific wavelengths that depend on its structure, the resulting absorption spectrum acts like a molecular fingerprint. For individual molecules, however, this signal is vanishingly small and mostly indistinguishable from noise. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-molecule-photon-entanglement-imperceptible-recoil.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:00:14 EDT news706866181 There's a new lighthouse on Long Island. But instead of shining light to guide ships through waterways, this one transmits and receives particles of light that carry quantum information. Perched atop a seven-story building at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, the "Quantum Lighthouse" is a key pillar of the free-space optical (FSO) link spanning Brookhaven Lab, the State University of New York at Stony Brook (Stony Brook University) and Yale University. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-free-space-optical-link-wireless.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:43:00 EDT news706783326 Electron microscopes are used wherever particularly small details need to be imaged. But from a strictly physical point of view, every electron in a conventional electron microscope represents a missed opportunity: If all you do is count electrons, any additional quantum information they carry remains unused. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-quantum-microscope-significantly-electron-microscopy.html Quantum Physics Sun, 23 Aug 2026 09:00:01 EDT news706276299 Long polymer chains are everywhere: in synthetic materials, soft matter, biological systems such as chromosomes, and mathematical models of filaments and knots. When many such chains are densely packed, they form what physicists call a polymer melt. In this crowded environment, each chain is constrained by the others around it. These entanglements are central to the behavior of polymeric materials, but they also make the systems extremely difficult to simulate. As chain length increases, the time needed to obtain a new independent configuration grows very rapidly. For very large systems, conventional simulations can therefore become computationally prohibitive. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-monte-carlo-method-simulations-densely.html Polymers Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:40:04 EDT news706536061 When different materials transition from one phase to another, such as water coming to a boil or a magnet losing its ability to attract metals, something remarkable can happen: They begin to behave identically, following the same mathematical rules. "Physicists call this trait universality—the messy, microscopic details wash out and only a few essential features survive," explains Jason Alicea, William K. Davis Professor of Theoretical Physics. The math underlying these universal traits is commonly described by a theoretical framework called conformal field theory. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-universal-pattern-revealed-quantum.html General Physics Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:20:01 EDT news706363021 Optical fibers are already the backbone of global communication systems. Recently, however, physicists have started to explore how their functionality could be boosted further by conveying information via entangled quantum particles—potentially enabling instantaneous exchanges of information across vast distances. Such a system could eventually be the basis of a future 'quantum internet,' offering a level of security and computing power beyond anything possible today. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-physicists-entangle-quantum-memories-km.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:30:01 EDT news706284107 Quantum sensors, devices that collect measurements by exploiting quantum-mechanical phenomena, could potentially detect extremely weak magnetic, gravitational and electromagnetic signals with greater sensitivity than classical sensors. Some quantum sensors leverage entanglement, a phenomenon that prompts distant particles to become so strongly linked that the physical state of one particle dictates the state of the others. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-approach-noise-resistant-quantum-sensors.html Quantum Physics Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:07 EDT news705926571 A study has been published in Nature Communications that identifies an unusual regime of quantum oscillations in a three-dimensional topological insulator. The results show that, when subjected to temperatures near absolute zero and extreme magnetic fields, electrons in the material zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe₅) exhibit behavior that deviates from the pattern predicted by conventional theory. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-anomalous-quantum-oscillations-reveal-physics.html Condensed Matter Mon, 17 Aug 2026 10:40:05 EDT news706178521 When one mentions "waves," we immediately think of a perturbation that propagates. This applies to waves on the shore, sound waves in the air or electromagnetic waves that we use to transmit information via optical fibers. The same idea of propagating perturbations applies to gravitational waves (GWs), which entered the mainstream media a decade ago after their first direct detection. These are perturbations of the elastic fabric that we are all embedded in, called spacetime. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-bound-gravitational-photonic.html General Physics Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:00:01 EDT news705839245 Latin squares are arrangements of symbols in a grid in which every symbol appears exactly once in each row and column. These symbol arrangements, which were first studied more than three centuries ago, are now widely used to optimize experimental designs and develop secure cryptographic systems, puzzles or other complex combinatorial structures. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-quantum-latin-squares-euler-officers.html Mathematics Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:02 EDT news705745989 Using light to process quantum information is one of the most promising approaches to building future quantum computers. Light particles, known as photons, are excellent carriers of quantum information, but their lack of natural interactions has created a major challenge for researchers seeking to build systems capable of performing a full range of computations. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-shifting-architecture-versatility-photonic-quantum.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:00:01 EDT news705325201 In Goethe's ballad "Erlkönig," immortalized in Schubert's fevered 1815 setting, a dying boy riding through the night sees a spectral king beckoning from the darkness. His father calms him: "Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif"—my son, it is only a wisp of fog. In the poem, the father's reassurance proves tragically wrong. In the quantum world, however, his words acquire an uncanny new meaning. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-mirror-world-particles-wisps-fog.html General Physics Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:40:02 EDT news705324723 Three years after a team of Caltech scientists showed that pairs of entangled photons could double the resolution of a light microscope, the same lab has figured out a way to double down on that improvement. They have now achieved a fourfold resolution boost compared to a classical microscope, using a new optical design that sends one of the entangled photons through the microscope's optics three times rather than just once. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-quantum-microscopy-quadruples-microscope-resolution.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:20:01 EDT news705248785 Quantum errors are a normal part of quantum computing because fragile physical qubits (the tiny components storing data) can easily break down because of environmental noise, like heat, stray signals or microscopic vibrations. Typical fixes involve vast amounts of extra hardware qubits, which make computers larger, more expensive and harder to build. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-qubit-entangling-gate-flags-errors.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:40:01 EDT news705228588 Today's quantum technologies rely on energy-intensive lasers, raising concerns that scaling them up could further increase energy demands. In new work, researchers have demonstrated that quantum entanglement between photons can be generated directly from sunlight, offering a potential alternative. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-sunlight-powered-setup-generates-quantum.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:00:04 EDT news705152641 In early 2025, special signals wended their way through a fiber-optic highway strung above the streets and sidewalks of the Maryland suburbs. The arrival of those signals at their destination marks a significant step toward a long-held dream of building a "quantum network." Researchers believe that this emerging technology could someday link quantum devices in ways that supercharge scientific research, enable ultrasecure communications and boost the power of future quantum computers. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-spooky-particles-transit-dc-suburbs.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:30:01 EDT news705164821