When you brush your hair in the morning, there’s a pretty good chance you’re not thinking about quantum physics. But the way your hair swirls as you brush is actually related to some features of the quantum world. Important properties of quantum particles are described by topology—a field of mathematics that classifies objects according to how many holes they have. This is not merely a... Continue Reading

Timothy Qian, a senior at Montgomery Blair High School, has been named a finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS) 2021 competition for the research from his summer research internship at the University of Maryland. He performed the work with the mentorship of JQI Fellow Alexey Gorshkov, who is also a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a Fellow of... Continue Reading

JQI Fellow Jake Taylor has been recognized by the federal government for his role in expanding U.S. policy and efforts in the fiercely competitive field of quantum information science. Taylor, who is also a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is the recipient of the... Continue Reading

Normally the word “chaos” evokes a lack of order: a hectic day, a teenager’s bedroom, tax season. And the physical understanding of chaos is not far off. It’s something that is extremely difficult to predict, like the weather. Chaos allows a small blip (the flutter of a butterfly wing) to grow into a big consequence (a typhoon halfway across the world), which explains why weather forecasts... Continue Reading

One of the chief obstacles facing quantum computer designers—correcting the errors that creep into a processor’s calculations—could be overcome with a new approach by physicists from and the California Institute of Technology, who may have found a way to design quantum memory switches that would self-correct. The team’s theory paper, which was published Dec. 8, 2020 in the journal Physical... Continue Reading

The digital age has seen electronics, including computer chips, shrink in size at an amazing rate, with ever tinier chips powering devices like smartphones, laptops and even autonomous drones. In the wake of this progress, another miniature technology has been gaining steam: integrated photonics. Photons, which are the quantum particles of... Continue Reading

JQI Fellow Alicia Kollár has been awarded a grant by the Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program (YIP). She is one of 36 early-career researchers around the US to receive the three-year, $450,000 award. Continue Reading

Two JQI Fellows are included on the Clarivate Web of Science Group’s 2020 list of Highly Cited Researchers, which recognizes influential scientists for their highly cited papers over the preceding decade. The two researchers are Sankar Das Sarma, the Director of the Condensed Matter... Continue Reading