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      What’s going on with the reports of a room-temperature superconductor?

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 4 August, 2023 - 14:07

    Image of two crystal structures, largely composed of repeated purple rhomboids interspersed with green and red balls.

    Enlarge / The normal structure of the material (left) and distortions that occur once copper is substituted in (right). (credit: Sinéad Griffin )

    In late July, a couple of startling papers appeared on the arXiv, a repository of pre-peer-review manuscripts on topics in physics and astronomy. The papers claim to describe the synthesis of a material that is not only able to superconduct above room temperature, but also above the boiling point of water. And it does so at normal atmospheric pressures.

    Instead of having to build upon years of work with exotic materials that only work under extreme conditions, the papers seem to describe a material that could be made via some relatively straightforward chemistry and would work if you set it on your desk. It was like finding a shortcut to a material that would revolutionize society.

    The perfect time to write an article on those results would be when they've been confirmed by multiple labs. But these are not perfect times. Instead, rumors seem to be flying daily about possible confirmation, confusing and contradictory results, and informed discussions of why this material either should or shouldn't work.

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      Qubits surf sound waves between quantum nodes

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 30 September, 2022 - 11:30

    Qubits surf sound waves between quantum nodes

    Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

    Inspired by the functioning of pulsed lasers, scientists from France and Japan have developed an acoustic counterpart that enables the precise and controlled transmission of single electrons between quantum nodes.

    Riding the waves

    The spin of an electron can serve as a basis for creating qubits—the basic unit of information of quantum computing. In order to process or store that information, the information in qubits may have to be transported between quantum nodes in a network.

    One option is transporting the electrons themselves, something that can now be done by having them ride sound waves. “More than 10 years ago, we demonstrated it for the first time,” said lead researcher Christopher Bauerle of the Grenoble-based Institute Néel .

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