Detecting several gases at once is crucial in areas such as environmental monitoring, industrial physics and fault diagnosis in electrical equipment. Methane is a key sign of natural-gas leakage, while acetylene, can indicate high-temperature faults such as arcing in transformer oil. The challenge right now is that many sensitive gas sensors either need separate detectors […]
Read article: Real-time multi-gas sensing
A new metamaterial design rule shows how simple steady-field patterns can be turned into a method for controlling complex waves
Read article: How do you design an invisibility cloak?
Imaginary numbers first appeared in the 16th century as a mathematical invention, introduced to solve equations that real numbers could not. As the name implies, many treated them as kind of trick to get results, rather than an underlying truth about the nature of reality. Although highly controversial at the time, these numbers are now ubiquitous […]
Read article: Real-number quantum theory can be more wrong than you thought
New work suggests that building nontrivial topologies around optical vortices could be a better strategy than engineering delicate polarisation patterns across an entire beam
Read article: Optical vortices provide a natural way to create topologies
A quantum computer that runs itself using an internal clock can only compute accurately if that clock is precise, and that precision comes with a thermodynamic cost
Read article: Quantum computers may pay a price for keeping time
New research shows that sensors based on exceptional points can beat ordinary sensors in ideal quantum-limited measurements, but only if the light input, loss rate, and the perturbation being measured are carefully matched
Read article: Do exceptional-point sensors really measure better?
New research shows that chemical reactions in an ultracold quantum gas can generate entanglement and transfer phase information from atoms to molecules
Read article: Quantum effects in chemical reactions
New research explores how a material’s unusual topological behaviour is connected to the way quantum states are shared between different parts of its lattice
Read article: When topology meets entanglement
By reshaping quasicrystals with carefully designed defects, researchers can create and control stable twisting beams of light in new ways.
Read article: A new way to trap and twist light inside quasicrystals
Limits on the speed of quantum algorithms are not quite as rigid as previously thought, according to new research
Read article: How can you fast-forward a quantum simulation?