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Quantum mechanics

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MIT researchers discover “neutronic molecules”

Study shows neutrons can bind to nanoscale atomic clusters known as quantum dots. The finding may provide insights into material properties and quantum effects.

April 3, 2024

Read full story →

Technique could improve the sensitivity of quantum sensing devices

The method lets researchers identify and control larger numbers of atomic-scale defects, to build a bigger system of qubits.

February 8, 2024

MIT researchers observe a hallmark quantum behavior in bouncing droplets

In a study that could help fill some holes in quantum theory, the team recreated a “quantum bomb tester” in a classical droplet test.

December 12, 2023

Canceling noise to improve quantum devices

MIT researchers develop a protocol to extend the life of quantum coherence.

September 6, 2023

Sensing and controlling microscopic spin density in materials

By fine-tuning the spin density in some materials, researchers may be able to develop new quantum sensors or quantum simulations.

August 2, 2023

New quantum magnet unleashes electronics potential

Researchers discover how to control the anomalous Hall effect and Berry curvature to create flexible quantum magnets for use in computers, robotics, and sensors.

July 25, 2023

International team reports powerful tool for studying, tuning atomically thin materials

Work could lead to heady applications in novel electronics and more.

June 27, 2023

Professor Emeritus Roman Jackiw, “giant of theoretical physics,” dies at 83

Over more than 50 years at MIT, he made fundamental contributions to quantum field theory and discovered topological and geometric phenomena.

June 20, 2023

Three Spanish MIT physics postdocs receive Botton Foundation fellowships

Recipients Luis Antonio Benítez, Carolina Cuesta-Lazaro, and Fernando Romero López receive support for their scientific research.

June 9, 2023

Learning to design with atoms and molecules

A hands-on class teaches undergraduates the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and nanoscale science from inside MIT.nano’s cleanroom.

March 30, 2023

QuARC 2023 explores the leading edge in quantum information and science

The second annual student-industry conference was held in-person for the first time.

March 3, 2023

Engineers discover a new way to control atomic nuclei as “qubits”

Using lasers, researchers can directly control a property of nuclei called spin, that can encode quantum information.

February 15, 2023

Physicists observe rare resonance in molecules for the first time

The findings could provide a new way to control chemical reactions.

February 1, 2023

MIT researchers use quantum computing to observe entanglement

Researchers at the Center for Theoretical Physics lead work on testing quantum gravity on a quantum processor.

December 1, 2022

A faster experiment to find and study topological materials

Using machine learning and simple X-ray spectra, researchers can uncover compounds that might enable next-generation computer chips or quantum devices.

October 26, 2022

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Articles on Quantum mechanics

Displaying 1 - 20 of 106 articles.

How long before quantum computers can benefit society? That’s Google’s US$5 million question

Adam Lowe , Aston University

Gravity experiments on the kitchen table: why a tiny, tiny measurement may be a big leap forward for physics

Sam Baron , The University of Melbourne

Australia may spend hundreds of millions of dollars on quantum computing research. Are we chasing a mirage?

Timothy Duignan , Griffith University

Could quantum physics be the key that unlocks the secrets of human behaviour?

Dorje C. Brody , University of Surrey

Quantum computers in 2023: how they work, what they do, and where they’re heading

Christopher Ferrie , University of Technology Sydney

Why Einstein must be wrong: In search of the theory of gravity

Valerio Faraoni , Bishop's University and Andrea Giusti , Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

How splitting sound might lead to a new kind of quantum computer

Andrew N. Cleland , University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

Quantum physics proposes a new way to study biology – and the results could revolutionize our understanding of how life works

Clarice D. Aiello , University of California, Los Angeles

Stephen Hawking and I created his final theory of the cosmos – here’s what it reveals about the origins of time and life

Thomas Hertog , KU Leuven

Australia has a National Quantum Strategy. What does that mean?

Jarryd Daymond , University of Sydney

New nanoparticle source generates high-frequency light

Anastasiia Zalogina , Australian National University and Sergey Kruk , Australian National University

Great Mysteries of Physics: do we really need a theory of everything?

Miriam Frankel , The Conversation

Great Mysteries of Physics 5: will we ever have a fundamental theory of life and consciousness?

‘QBism’: quantum mechanics is not a description of objective reality – it reveals a world of genuine free will

Ruediger Schack , Royal Holloway University of London

Great Mysteries of Physics 4: does objective reality exist?

Great Mysteries of Physics 3: is there a multiverse?

Quantum mechanics: how the future might influence the past

Huw Price , University of Cambridge and Ken Wharton , San José State University

Physicists have used entanglement to ‘stretch’ the uncertainty principle, improving quantum measurements

Lorcan Conlon , Australian National University and Syed Assad , Australian National University

Four common misconceptions about quantum physics

Alessandro Fedrizzi , Heriot-Watt University and Mehul Malik , Heriot-Watt University

What quantum technology means for Canada’s future

Stephanie Simmons , Simon Fraser University

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• Albert Einstein
• General Relativity
• Particle physics
• Quantum computing
• Quantum entanglement
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Director, Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Griffith University

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Lecturer, The University of Queensland

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Quantum research

The search for a nonflammable lithium battery technology.

Artistic impression of lithium ions whizzing around at an solid-state...

• Read more about The search for a nonflammable lithium battery technology

Ashok Ajoy announced as a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar

CIFAR, a leading international research organization which funds outstanding early-career researchers and provides opportunities for mentorship and collaboration, has named Assistant Professor of Chemistry Ashok Ajoy a 2022...

• Read more about Ashok Ajoy announced as a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar

An electronic crystal turned flat

Artist rendering of a layered charge-density-wave material. Blue spheres represent lattice ions while sinusoidal curves represent waves of electron density. In this case, the charge density wave possesses long-range order both within a layer and between layers. (Illustration by Alfred Zong) ...

• Read more about An electronic crystal turned flat

Technique tunes into graphene nanoribbons’ electronic potential

Photo: Scanning tunneling microscopy image of a zigzag graphene nanoribbon. (Credit: Felix Fischer/Berkeley Lab)

Ever since graphene – a thin carbon sheet just one-atom thick – was discovered more than 15 years ago, the wonder material became a workhorse in materials science research. From this body of work, other researchers...

• Read more about Technique tunes into graphene nanoribbons’ electronic potential

Atom computing raises $15M and launches first-generation quantum computer

Atom Computing announced its first-generation 100-atom quantum computer on July 21, 2021. (Image courtesty Atom Computing.)

Quantum computing company Atom Computing , co-founded by Jonathan King ( Ph.D. '12, ChemE ), will base...

• Read more about Atom computing raises $15M and launches first-generation quantum computer

Michael Zuerch receives award for quantum electronic and optics research

Illustration: artist’s rendering of the XUV-SHG on a titanium foil. Courtesy of the lab of Michael Zurch.

The College of Chemistry is...

• Read more about Michael Zuerch receives award for quantum electronic and optics research

Scientists uncover a process that stands in the way of making quantum dots brighter

Atomic scale quantum dot arrays. Illustration courtesy of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Bright semiconductor nanocrystals known as quantum dots give QLED TV screens their vibrant colors. But attempts to increase the intensity of that light generate heat instead, reducing the dots’ light-producing efficiency.

• Read more about Scientists uncover a process that stands in the way of making quantum dots brighter

New $115 Million Quantum Systems Accelerator to Pioneer Quantum Technologies for Discovery Science

The Quantum Systems Accelerator will optimize a wide range of advanced qubit technologies available today. Berkeley Lab uses sophisticated dilution refrigerators to cool and operate superconducting quantum processor circuits. (Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab)

The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $115 million over five years to the Quantum...

• Read more about New $115 Million Quantum Systems Accelerator to Pioneer Quantum Technologies for Discovery Science

Birgitta Whaley: Finding the quantum in biology

Birgitta Whaley, Professor of Chemistry and co-director of the Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center, presented this year's endowed G.N. Lewis Lecture at the College of Chemistry. Professor Whaley currently serves on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She is a foremost expert in the fields of quantum information, quantum physics, molecular quantum mechanics, and quantum biology.

This lecture is given annually in honor of Gilbert Newton Lewis who was the...

• Read more about Birgitta Whaley: Finding the quantum in biology

Why you should stay single: The scientific benefits of using a single photon

Like many other labs, Graham Fleming’s group is focusing on interdisciplinary techniques to make new discoveries and explore the mysteries of fundamental processes. Chemistry graduate student Kaydren Orcutt highlights how researchers can combine physics and biology, generating single photons in a bid to unentangle the mysteries of photosynthesis.

The scientists in...

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Topics in Quantum Mechanics

• © 2003
• Floyd Williams 0

Department of Mathematics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Part of the book series: Progress in Mathematical Physics (PMP, volume 27)

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Table of contents (19 chapters)

Front matter, introductory concepts in quantum theory, units of measurement.

Floyd Williams

Quantum Mechanics: Some Remarks and Themes

Equations of motion in classical mechanics, quantization and the schrödinger equation, hypergeometric equations and special functions, hydrogen-like atoms, heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, group representations and selection rules, the quantized hamiltonian for a charged particle in an electromagnetic field, spin wave functions, introduction to multi-electron atoms, some selected topics, fresnel integrals and feynman integrals, path integral for the harmonic oscillator, euclidean path integrals, the density matrix and partition function in quantum statistical mechanics, zeta regularization, helmholtz free energy for certain negatively curved space-times, and the selberg trace formula.

• Gauge theory
• Qunatum mechanics
• differential equation
• groups/harmonic analysis
• hypergeometric functions
• number theory
• quantum mechanics

About this book

Authors and affiliations, bibliographic information.

Book Title : Topics in Quantum Mechanics

Authors : Floyd Williams

Series Title : Progress in Mathematical Physics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0009-3

Publisher : Birkhäuser Boston, MA

eBook Packages : Springer Book Archive

Copyright Information : Springer Science+Business Media New York 2003

Hardcover ISBN : 978-0-8176-4311-9 Published: 23 January 2003

Softcover ISBN : 978-1-4612-6571-9 Published: 23 October 2012

eBook ISBN : 978-1-4612-0009-3 Published: 06 December 2012

Series ISSN : 1544-9998

Series E-ISSN : 2197-1846

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XV, 398

Number of Illustrations : 1 b/w illustrations

Topics : Number Theory , Topological Groups, Lie Groups , Analysis , Quantum Physics

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The 12 Most Important and Stunning Quantum Experiments of 2019

Quantum computing seems to inch closer every year.

The smallest scale events have giant consequences. And no field of science demonstrates that better than quantum physics, which explores the strange behaviors of — mostly — very small things. In 2019, quantum experiments went to new and even stranger places and practical quantum computing inched ever closer to reality, despite some controversies. These were the most important and surprising quantum events of 2019.

Google claims "quantum supremacy"

If one quantum news item from 2019 makes the history books, it will probably be a big announcement that came from Google: The tech company announced that it had achieved " quantum supremacy ." That's a fancy way of saying that Google had built a computer that could perform certain tasks faster than any classical computer could. (The category of classical computers includes any machine that relies on regular old 1s and 0s, such as the device you're using to read this article.)

Google's quantum supremacy claim, if borne out, would mark an inflection point in the history of computing. Quantum computers rely on strange small-scale physical effects like entanglement , as well as certain basic uncertainties in the nano-universe, to perform their calculations. In theory, that quality gives these machines certain advantages over classical computers. They can easily break classical encryption schemes, send perfectly encrypted messages, run some simulations faster than classical computers can and generally solve hard problems very easily. The difficulty is that no one's ever made a quantum computer fast enough to take advantage of those theoretical advantages — or at least no one had, until Google's feat this year.

Not everyone buys the tech company's supremacy claim though. Subhash Kak, a quantum skeptic and researcher at Oklahoma State University, laid out several of the reasons in this article for Live Science .

Read more about Google's achievement of quantum supremacy .

The kilogram goes quantum

Another 2019 quantum inflection point came from the world of weights and measures. The standard kilogram, the physical object that defined the unit of mass for all measurements, had long been a 130-year-old, platinum-iridium cylinder weighing 2.2 lbs. and sitting in a room in France. That changed this year.

The old kilo was pretty good, barely changing mass over the decades. But the new kilo is perfect: Based on the fundamental relationship between mass and energy, as well as a quirk in the behavior of energy at quantum scales, physicists were able to arrive at a definition of the kilogram that won't change at all between this year and the end of the universe.

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now

Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.

Read more about the perfect kilogram .

Reality broke a little

A team of physicists designed a quantum experiment that showed that facts actually change depending on your perspective on the situation. Physicists performed a sort of "coin toss" using photons in a tiny quantum computer, finding that the results were different at different detectors, depending on their perspectives.

"We show that, in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts," the experimentalists wrote in an article for Live Science . "In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective."

Read more about the lack of objective reality .

Entanglement got its glamour shot

For the first time, physicists made a photograph of the phenomenon Albert Einstein described as "spooky action at a distance," in which two particles remain physically linked despite being separated across distances. This feature of the quantum world had long been experimentally verified, but this was the first time anyone got to see it .

Read more about the unforgettable image of entanglement .

Something big went in multiple directions

In some ways the conceptual opposite of entanglement, quantum superposition is enables a single object to be in two (or more) places at once, a consequence of matter existing as both particles and waves. Typically, this is achieved with tiny particles like electrons.

But in a 2019 experiment, physicists managed to pull off superposition at the largest scale ever : using hulking, 2,000-atom molecules from the world of medical science known as "oligo-tetraphenylporphyrins enriched with fluoroalkylsulfanyl chains."

Read about the macro-scale achievement of superposition .

Heat crossed the vacuum

Under normal circumstances, heat can cross a vacuum in only one manner: in the form of radiation. (That's what you're feeling when the sun's rays cross space to beat on your face on a summer day.) Otherwise, in standard physical models, heat moves in two manners: First, energized particles can knock into other particles and transfer their energy. (Wrap your hands around a warm cup of tea to feel this effect.) Second, a warm fluid can displace a colder fluid. (That's what happens when you turn the heater on in your car, flooding the interior with warm air.) So without radiation, heat can't cross a vacuum.

But quantum physics, as usual, breaks the rules. In a 2019 experiment, physicists took advantage of the fact that at the quantum scale, vacuums aren't truly empty. Instead, they're full of tiny, random fluctuations that pop into and out of existence. At a small enough scale, the researchers found, heat can cross a vacuum by jumping from one fluctuation to the next across the apparently empty space.

Read more about heat leaping across the quantum vacuum of space .

Cause and effect might have gone backward

This next finding is far from an experimentally verified discovery, and it's even well outside the realm of traditional quantum physics. But researchers working with quantum gravity — a theoretical construct designed to unify the worlds of quantum mechanics and Einstein's general relativity — showed that under certain circumstances an event might cause an effect that occurred earlier in time.

Certain very heavy objects can influence the flow of time in their immediate vicinity due to general relativity. We know this is true. And quantum superposition dictates that objects can be in multiple places at once. Put a very heavy object (like a big planet) in a state of quantum superposition, the researchers wrote, and you can design oddball scenarios where cause and effect take place in the wrong order .

Read more about cause and effect reversing .

Quantum tunneling cracked

Physicists have long known about a strange effect known as "quantum tunneling," in which particles seem to pass through seemingly impassable barriers . It's not because they're so small that they find holes, though. In 2019, an experiment showed how this really happens.

Quantum physics says that particles are also waves, and you can think of those waves as probability projections for the location of the particle. But they're still waves. Smash a wave against a barrier in the ocean, and it will lose some energy, but a smaller wave will appear on the other side. A similar effect occurs in the quantum world, the researchers found. And as long as there's a bit of probability wave left on the far side of the barrier, the particle has a chance of making it through the obstruction, tunneling through a space where it seems it should not fit.

Read more about the amazing quantum tunneling effect .

Metallic hydrogen may have appeared on Earth

This was a big year for ultra-high-pressure physics. And one of the boldest claims came from a French laboratory, which announced that it had created a holy grail substance for materials science: metallic hydrogen . Under high enough pressures, such as those thought to exist at the core of Jupiter, single-proton hydrogen atoms are thought to act as an alkali metal. But no one had ever managed to generate pressures high enough to demonstrate the effect in a lab before. This year, the team said they'd seen it at 425 gigapascals (4.2 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level). Not everyone buys that claim , however.

Read more about metallic hydrogen .

We beheld the quantum turtle

Zap a mass of supercooled atoms with a magnetic field , and you'll see "quantum fireworks": jets of atoms firing off in apparently random directions. Researchers suspected there might be a pattern in the fireworks, but it wasn't obvious just from looking. With the aid of a computer, though, researchers discovered a shape to the fireworks effect: a quantum turtle . No one's yet sure why it takes that shape, however.

Read more about the quantum turtle .

A tiny quantum computer turned back time

Time's supposed to move in only one direction: forward. Spill some milk on the ground, and there's no way to perfectly dry out the dirt and return that same clean milk back into the cup. A spreading quantum wave function doesn't unspread.

Except in this case, it did. Using a tiny, two-qubit quantum computer, physicists were able to write an algorithm that could return every ripple of a wave to the particle that created it — unwinding the event and effectively turning back the arrow of time .

Read more about reversing time's arrow .

Another quantum computer saw 16 futures

A nice feature of quantum computers, which rely on superpositions rather than 1s and 0s, is their ability to play out multiple calculations at once. That advantage is on full display in a new quantum prediction engine developed in 2019. Simulating a series of connected events, the researchers behind the engine were able to encode 16 possible futures into a single photon in their engine . Now that's multitasking!

Read more about the 16 possible futures .

• The 10 Weirdest Science Studies of 2019
• 18 Times Quantum Particle Blew Our Minds
• What's That? Your Physics Questions Answered

Originally published on Live Science .

Scientists made the coldest large molecule on record — and it has a super strange chemical bond

Physicists make record-breaking 'quantum vortex' to study the mysteries of black holes

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'It's ultimately about predicting everything'—theory could be a map in the hunt for quantum materials

by University of Copenhagen

A breakthrough in theoretical physics is an important step toward predicting the behavior of the fundamental matter of which our world is built. It can be used to calculate systems of enormous quantities of quantum particles, a feat thought impossible before.

The new University of Copenhagen research may prove of great importance for the design of quantum computers and could even be a map to superconductors that function at room temperature. The paper is published in the journal Physical Review X .

On the fringes of theoretical physics , Berislav Buca investigates the nearly impossible by way of "exotic" mathematics. His latest theory is no exception. By making it possible to calculate the dynamics, i.e., movements and interactions, of systems with enormous quantities of quantum particles, it has delivered something that had been written off in physics. An impossibility made possible.

The unexpected presence of a white cat adorns the illustrations of Buca's research. Pulci the cat is his eye-catching muse. Arrows through the cat's body illustrate the quantum mechanical origin of the playful cat's movements—and this is precisely the relationship that Buca is trying to understand by making it possible to calculate the dynamics of the very smallest particles.

The breakthrough has reinvigorated an old and fundamental scientific question: Theoretically, if all behavior in the universe can be calculated by way of the laws of physics, can we then predict everything by calculating its smallest particles?

"Many physics disciplines are ultimately about explaining and predicting the world by understanding the laws of physics and calculating the behavior of the smallest particles. In principle, we would be able to answer any possible question about how all sorts of things behave if we were able to," says Buca of the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute.

"In principle, the behavior of everything in the universe can be understood from the microscopic laws that govern particle dynamics," he says, while quickly appealing for caution.

"Of course I can't do that," says the theorist.

A theoretical shortcut avoids the devil in the details

The interactions and movements of quantum particles in their systems are so complex, the researcher explains, that even the world's most powerful supercomputer today is only able to perform calculations on a dozen of these particles at a time.

At the same time, a single atom consists of at least two quantum particles, and a single grain of sand of about 50 billion times a billion atoms—not to mention a cat or anything else one would want to understand in our universe.

"So in practice, it isn't possible. Not currently. However, my theory is a significant step in the right direction. This is because it takes a kind of mathematical shortcut to understanding the dynamics of the whole, without computing power being lost in the details for a broad class of systems with many quantum particles. That is, without the need to calculate all of the individual particles in a system," explains Buca.

The theory has already made a name for itself by providing the first mathematical proof of a long-held hypothesis in theoretical physics.

Up until now, the so-called eigenstate-thermalization hypothesis has been an assumption—an educated guess—in physics that had yet to be explained mathematically. It concerns the ability of mathematics to describe the motions of quantum systems as wholes.

Thus, Buca's theory has already demonstrated its value as basic theoretical research, and accomplished what theorists had long considered impossible. While the results mainly interest the bright minds of physics for now, the consequences could eventually be great for us all.

A compass for the quantum-mechanical treasure map

This knowledge could end up showing the way to sought for quantum materials with properties so unique that they could transform our world.

These quantum materials are a prerequisite for digging our claws into some of the greatest scientific "birds on the bush"—such as stable quantum computers or even superconductors that work at room temperature.

"We are looking for a material for quantum computers that can withstand entropy—a law of nature that causes complex systems —e.g., materials—to decay into less complex forms. Entropy destroys the coherence needed for quantum computers to be stable and keep working," Buca explains.

The exotic math systems that initially inspired him and made his research breakthrough possible may be just what a quantum computer needs to be truly useful.

"The so-called qubits that a quantum computer theoretically works with must be in a state of superposition to function, meaning that they are simultaneously turned on and off—in common phrasing. This requires them to be in a stable quantum state. However, thermodynamics does not like the structures required by the current materials. My theory may be able to inform us whether these exotic systems can be a way of structuring things so this quantum state could be more permanent," says Buca.

The method is a bit like a road map that can guide researchers across a vast landscape of possible materials by allowing for predictions of how these materials would behave under experimental conditions. For the first time, this gives researchers a way to target their search for quantum materials equipped with special properties.

"Until now, the hunt for these materials has been governed by chance. But my results can, for the first time, provide a guiding principle to navigate by when searching for unique properties in materials," says Buca.

Journal information: Physical Review X

Provided by University of Copenhagen

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Entangled entities: Bohr, Einstein and the battle over quantum fundamentals

Philip Ball reviews Quantum Drama: From the Bohr-Einstein Debate to the Riddle of Entanglement by Jim Baggott and John L Heilbron

Next year sees the centenary of the summer in which German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg sought refuge from hay fever on the North Sea island of Helgoland. There, he figured out how to express the perplexing spectroscopic observations of atoms – whereby they absorbed and emitted light at well-defined, characteristic frequencies – in mathematical form. Heisenberg’s mentor, Danish physicist Niels Bohr, had proposed that the spectra could be understood on the assumption that an atom’s electrons may possess only specific energies, switching from one energy level to another by emitting or absorbing a single “quantum” of light with an energy proportional to its frequency. That quantum hypothesis for light had been proposed by Albert Einstein in 1905, and Bohr had developed it into a new theory of the atom – albeit one that made no sense in classical terms.

By expressing the permitted energies of these “quantum jumps” as a matrix of experimentally observed values, Heisenberg transformed the ad hoc , nascent quantum theory into a genuine quantum mechanics. His matrix algebra implied that it was not possible to simultaneously know both the position and the momentum of a particle with arbitrary accuracy. This “uncertainty principle” suggested that quantum physics imposed limits on the knowledge we can have about the atomic world.

Bohr, Heisenberg and their collaborators in Copenhagen went on to argue that this restriction is fundamental. It is not that we are doomed to remain ignorant about exactly how things are, but rather that there is no meaningful “how things are” until they are measured. The suggestion sparked a good-natured but trenchant argument between Bohr and Einstein that lasted for much of their shared lifetime. “Einstein could not make the concession. It would rub out separate, individual objects, essential traits of an acceptable world picture,” write John Heilbron and Jim Baggott in their new book Quantum Drama : From the Bohr-Einstein Debate to the Riddle of Entanglement . Baggott, a physicist and science writer, and Heilbron, a historian of science who died in 2023, tell the history of quantum mechanics, from its inception to today’s cutting edge of quantum information technology.

Einstein never tired of concocting new objections to the “Copenhagen” view. At the Solvay Conference of 1930 in Belgium, which brought together the leading physicists of the day, he confronted Bohr with a paradoxical thought experiment involving a heavy box hanging from a spring, containing a photon (that escapes) and a fixed clock. Bohr produced a response to the puzzle that assuaged many doubts but seems not to have satisfied Bohr himself. “He fretted over it for the rest of his life,” say Heilbron and Baggott. “A rough sketch of the apparatus was on his blackboard the day he died.”

Einstein’s opposition exposed the deeply counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics – most famously in a thought experiment devised in 1935 with his younger colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. This “EPR [Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen] experiment” showed that, once two particles have interacted, quantum mechanics seemed to insist that their properties thereafter remain interdependent, such that a measurement elicits impossible instantaneous signalling between the two. Erwin Schrödinger, who shared Einstein’s antipathy to the Copenhagen view, named this effect “entanglement”.

To Einstein, the EPR paradox could be resolved only by assuming that the entangled particles had fixed properties all along, albeit ones that were unobservable and thus characterized by “hidden variables”. The problem was that both Bohr’s and Einstein’s interpretations made identical experimental predictions. With no obvious way to resolve the question, it was set aside, and many researchers in the 1940s and 1950s deemed such “foundational” questions pointless or even unseemly. Who cared, when quantum mechanics worked so well in practice? This was the attitude famously characterized by American physicist David Mermin as “shut up and calculate”, which was particularly dominant in the pragmatic US. Taking an interest in such issues could be tantamount to career suicide. “You’ll never get a PhD if you allow yourself to be distracted by such frivolities,” Mermin was told at Harvard, according to the book. He remarks that “it was a very unphilosophical time”.

Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann charged Bohr with having brainwashed a generation of physicists into thinking that the puzzles of quantum mechanics had all been long solved

In her 1999 book Quantum Dialogue , historian of science Mara Beller accused Bohr and his colleagues of imposing their Copenhagen orthodoxy and marginalizing or ridiculing alternative interpretations such as David Bohm’s “pilot waves” and Hugh Everett’s “universal wavefunction”, also known as the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics. Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann charged Bohr with having brainwashed a generation of physicists into thinking that the puzzles of quantum mechanics had all been long solved. But Heilbron and Baggott show that it’s fairer to lay the blame on the apathy of the community at large. As Paul Dirac said of the theory’s metaphysical conundrums: “Many people live long and fruitful lives without ever worrying about [them].”

Thirty years of ‘against measurement’

That attitude began to change, however, in 1964 when the Northern Irish physicist John Bell figured out a way to distinguish the so-called hidden-variables models from no-frills quantum mechanics. All it needed was some serious thought – “There was nothing in Bell’s inequality that was not known to the quantum founders,” the authors say.

Ironically, Bell came up with his celebrated test because he wanted to find a flaw in Bohrian quantum mechanics. So did the first person to conduct the test experimentally, John Clauser, working with Stuart Freedman at the University of California at Berkeley. Yet that experiment, and the many others later carried out, have unfailingly supported quantum mechanics alone and ruled out any hidden variables – at least those that apply locally to assign each particle fixed properties at a given position before measurement. (That does not mean Bohr is right, although it seems nearly impossible to salvage Einstein’s position.) The book gives a superb account of the resurgence of interest in quantum foundations that followed from the work of Bell and Clauser, involving in particular Clauser’s fellow 2022 Nobel laureates Anton Zeilinger and Alain Aspect. Far from being empty philosophizing, such studies now undergird technologies such as quantum computing and quantum cryptography.

Quantum Drama tells a complex story with a vast cast. While the authors sometimes demand a lot from their readers, I have never read a better account: balanced, authoritative and spiced with elegant wit. Describing a trip to Japan made by several of the early quantum pioneers, Heilbron and Baggott describe how on a walk past a pagoda “Heisenberg spontaneously climbed it and, standing on its very apex (width ∆q) on one foot in a howling wind, happily maintained an uncertainty ∆p too small to knock him over.”

This book won’t be all things to all people. As with Heilbron’s earlier book Niels Bohr: A Very Short Introduction , its description of the Bohr atom is so technical as to be nigh impenetrable to all but specialists, creating a formidable hurdle so early in the book. And there are other occasions, such as in the descriptions of Bell tests, where one longs for a pithy summary of qualitative meaning among the details. At times the reader is thrown a succession of comments from experts without much indication of how to navigate their contradictions.

But if this makes the book occasionally challenging for the general reader, the payoff for perseverance is considerable. As the author of a popular-level account of quantum mechanics, I hesitate to suggest leaving such efforts aside in favour of this more substantial volume – but I would certainly recommend treating all such accounts with caution until you have read this one.

• 2024 Oxford University Press 352pp £25hb

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Quantum breakthrough when light makes materials magnetic

The potential of quantum technology is huge but is today largely limited to the extremely cold environments of laboratories. Now, researchers at Stockholm University, at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics and at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice have succeeded in demonstrating for the very first time how laser light can induce quantum behavior at room temperature -- and make non-magnetic materials magnetic. The breakthrough is expected to pave the way for faster and more energy-efficient computers, information transfer and data storage.

Within a few decades, the advancement of quantum technology is expected to revolutionize several of society's most important areas and pave the way for completely new technological possibilities in communication and energy. Of particular interest for researchers in the field are the peculiar and bizarre properties of quantum particles -- which deviate completely from the laws of classical physics and can make materials magnetic or superconducting. By increasing the understanding of exactly how and why this type of quantum states arise, the goal is to be able to control and manipulate materials to obtain quantum mechanical properties.

So far, researchers have only been able to induce quantum behaviors, such as magnetism and superconductivity, at extremely cold temperatures. Therefore, the potential of quantum research is still limited to laboratory environments.

Now, a research team from Stockholm University and the Nordic Institute of Theoretical Physics (NORDITA)* in Sweden, the University of Connecticut and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in USA, the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, the Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste, the 'Sapienza' University of Rome and the Ca' Foscari University of Venice in Italy, is the first in the world to demonstrate in an experiment how laser light can induce magnetism in a non-magnetic material at room temperature. In the study, published in Nature , the researchers subjected the quantum material strontium titanate to short but intense laser beams of a peculiar wavelength and polarization, to induced magnetism.

"The innovation in this method lies in the concept of letting light move atoms and electrons in this material in circular motion, so to generate currents that make it as magnetic as a refrigerator magnet. We have been able to do so by developing a new light source in the far-infrared with a polarization which has a "corkscrew" shape. This is the first time we have been able to induce and clearly see how the material becomes magnetic at room temperature in an experiment. Furthermore, our approach allows to make magnetic materials out of many insulators, when magnets are typically made of metals. In the long run, this opens for completely new applications in society," says the research leader Stefano Bonetti at Stockholm University and at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice

The method is based on the theory of "dynamic multiferroicity," which predicts that when titanium atoms are "stirred up" with circularly polarized light in an oxide based on titanium and strontium, a magnetic field will be formed. But it is only now that the theory can be confirmed in practice. The breakthrough is expected to have broad applications in several information technologies.

"This opens up for ultra-fast magnetic switches that can be used for faster information transfer and considerably better data storage, and for computers that are significantly faster and more energy-efficient," says Alexander Balatsky, professor of physics at NORDITA.

In fact, the results of the team have already been reproduced in several other labs, and a publication in the same issue of Nature demonstrates that this approach can be used to write, and hence store, magnetic information. A new chapter in designing new materials using light has been opened.

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• Published: 09 April 2024

A call for responsible quantum technology

• Urs Gasser   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6899-5647 1 , 2 ,
• Eline De Jong   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9167-5585 2 , 3 &
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The time has come to consider appropriate guardrails to ensure quantum technology benefits humanity and the planet. With quantum development still in flux, the science community shares a responsibility in defining principles and practices.

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Kop, M. et al. Towards Responsible Quantum Technology (Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, 2023), https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication/2023/towards-responsible-quantum-technology

Kop, M. et al. 10 Principles for Responsible Quantum Innovation (Stanford Law School, 2023); https://law.stanford.edu/publications/10-principles-for-responsible-quantum-innovation/

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Waldherr, A. Quantum Hardware, Simulation & Education (Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology, Stanford Law School 2023); https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-center-for-responsible-quantum-technology/projects/quantum-hardware-simulation-education/

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