When Light and Atoms Share a Common Vibe

An especially counter-intuitive feature of quantum mechanics is that a single event can exist in a state of superposition — happening both here and there, or both today and tomorrow.

Such superpositions are hard to create, as they are destroyed if any kind of information about the place and time of the event leaks into the surrounding — and even if nobody actually records this information. But when superpositions do occur, they lead to observations that are very different from that of classical physics, questioning down to our very understanding of space and time.

Electrons in materials have a property known as ‘spin’, which is responsible for a variety of properties, the most well-known of which is magnetism. Permanent magnets, like the ones used for refrigerator doors, have all the spins in their electrons aligned in the same direction. Scientists refer to this behavior as ferromagnetism, and the research field of trying to manipulate spin as spintronics.

Down in the quantum world, spins can arrange in more exotic ways, giving rise to frustrated states and entangled magnets. Interestingly, a property similar to spin, known as “the valley,” appears in graphene materials. This unique feature has given rise to the field of valleytronics, which aims to exploit the valley property for emergent physics and information processing, very much like spintronics relies on pure spin physics.

This work provides evidence for something scientists predicted long ago.

Scientists have spotted the first evidence of a rare Higgs boson decay, expanding our understanding of the strange quantum universe.