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As the number of cancer cases continues to grow, radiation oncology departments are under increasing pressure to treat more and more patients. And as clinical facilities expand to manage this ongoing growth, and technology developments increase the complexity of radiotherapy delivery, there’s an urgent need to optimize the treatment workflow without ramping up time or staffing requirements.
To enable this level of optimization, radiation therapy departments will require an efficient quality management system that can handle both machine and patient quality assurance (QA), works seamlessly with treatment devices from multiple vendors, and provides the time savings required to ease staff workload.
Driven by growth
A case in point is the Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida, which in 2018 shifted all of its QA to SunCHECK, a quality management platform from Sun Nuclear that combines hardware and software to streamline treatment and delivery system QA into one centralized platform. Speaking at a recent Sun Nuclear webinar, clinical physicist Daniel Opp explained that the primary driver for this switch was growth.
Daniel Opp “Having one system means that we’re able to do tests in the same way across all our linacs.” (Courtesy: D Opp)
“In 2018, our physicians were shifting to perform a lot more SBRT [stereotactic body radiation therapy]. Our leadership had plans in motion to add online adaptive planning as well as expand with opening more radiation oncology centres,” he explained.
At that time, the centre was using multiple software platforms and many different imaging phantoms to run its QA, with physicists still relying on manual measurements and qualitative visual assessments. Now, the team performs all machine QA using SunCHECK Machine and almost all patient-specific QA [PSQA] using SunCHECK Patient.
“Our QA software and data were fractured and all over the place,” said Opp. “The move to SunCHECK made sense as it gave us the ability to integrate all measurements, software and databases into a one-stop shop, providing significant time savings and far cleaner record keeping.”
SunCHECK also simplifies QA procedures by consolidating tests. Opp explained that back in 2018, photon tests on the centre’s linacs required five setups, 12 measurements and manually entering values 22 times; SunCHECK reduced this to one setup, four measurements and no manual entries. “This alone gives you an overview of the significant time savings,” he said.
Another benefit is the ability to automate tests and ensure standardization. “If you tell our large group of physicists to do a picket fence test, we’ll all do it a little differently,” Opp explained. “Having one system on which we’re all running the same tests means that we’re able to do the test in the same way across all our linacs.”
Opp noted that SunCHECK displays all required information on an easy-to-read screen, with the patient QA worklist on one side and the machine QA worklist on the other. “You see a snapshot of the clinic and can figure out if there’s anything you need to take care of. It’s very efficient in letting you know when something needs your attention,” he said.
Sansourekidou initiated the switch to SunCHECK after joining UNM in 2020 as its new director of medical physics. At that time the cancer centre was treating about 1000 patients per year. But high patient numbers led to a long waiting list – with roughly three months between referral and the start of treatment – and clear need for the facility to expand.
Patricia Sansourekidou “We saw huge time savings for both monthly and daily QA.” (Courtesy: P Sansourekidou)
Assessing the centre’s QA procedures in 2020 revealed that the team was using a wide variety of QA software, making routine checks time consuming. Monthly linac QA, for example, required roughly 32 files and took about 14 hours to perform. In addition, Sansourekidou noted, physicists were spending hours every month adjusting the machines. “One day it was the energy that was off and then the output was off; I soon realised that, in the absence of appropriate software, we were making adjustments back and forth,” she said. “More importantly, we had no way to track these trends.”
Sansourekidou concluded that the centre needed an improved QA solution based on one unified platform. “So we went on a physics hunt,” she said. “We met with every vendor out there and Sun Nuclear won the request for proposal. So we implemented SunCHECK Machine and SunCHECK Patient.”
Switching to SunCHECK reduced monthly QA to just 4–5 hours per linac. “We’re saving about nine hours per linac per month; that’s 324 hours per year when we could be doing something else for our patients,” said Sansourekidou. Importantly, the new software enables the team to visualize trends and assess whether a genuine problem is present.
For daily QA, which previously required numerous spreadsheets and systems, SunCHECK’s daily QA template provides time savings of about 60%. “At six in the morning, that’s important,” Sansourekidou pointed out. Annual QA saw roughly 33% time savings, while for the 70% of patients requiring PSQA, time savings were about 25%.
Another “unexpected side effect” of deploying SunCHECK, said Sansourekidou, is that the IT department was happy to maintain one platform. “Every time we have a new physicist, it’s much easier for our IT department to set them up. That has been a huge benefit for us,” she said. “Additionally, our service engineers are happy because we are not spending hours of their time adjusting the machine back and forth.”
“Overall, I thought there were great improvements that really helped us justify the initial investment – not just monetary, but also time investment from our physics team,” she said.
Efficiency savings QA times before and after implementing SunCHECK at the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center. (Courtesy: Patricia Sansourekidou)
Phantom-free QA
For Opp, one of the biggest features enabled by SunCHECK was the move to phantom-free PSQA, which saves a lot of time and eliminates errors that can be inherent to phantom-based QA. In the last year, the Moffitt team also switched to using DoseCHECK – SunCHECK’s secondary 3D dose calculation algorithm – as the foundation of its quality checks. Alongside, a RayStation script checks plan deliverability to ensure that no problems arise once the patient is on the table.
“We don’t do our pre-treatment QA anymore. We rely on those two to get confidence into the final work and then we run our logs off the first patient fraction,” Opp explained. “We have a large physics group and there was natural apprehension, but everybody got on board and agreed that this was a shift we needed to make. We leveraged DoseCHECK to create a better QA system for ourselves.”
Since 2018, both patient workload and staff numbers at the Moffitt Cancer Center have doubled. By the end of 2025, it will also have almost doubled its number of treatment units. The centre has over 100 SunCHECK users – including therapists, dosimetrists and physicists – and Opp emphasized that the system is robust enough to handle all these users doing different tasks at different times without any issues.
As patient numbers increase, the time savings conferred by SunCHECK help reduce staff workload and improve quality-of-life for users. The centre currently performs about 100 PSQA procedures per week, which would have taken about 37 hours using previous QA processes – a workload that Opp notes would not be managed well. SunCHECK reduced the weekly average to around seven hours.
Similarly, linac QA previously required two or three late nights per month (or one full day on the weekend). “After the switch to SunCHECK, everybody’s pretty much able to get it done in one late night per month,” said Opp. He added that the Moffitt Cancer Center’s continuing growth has required the onboarding of many new physicists – and that it’s significantly easier to train these new staff with all of the QA software in one centralized platform.
Enabling accreditation
Finally, accreditation is essential for radiation oncology departments to demonstrate the ability to deliver safe, high-quality care. The UNM Comprehensive Cancer Centre’s previous American College of Radiology (ACR) accreditation had expired before Sansourekidou’s arrival, and she was keen to rectify this situation. And in March 2024 the centre achieved ASTRO’s APEx accreditation.
“SunCHECK helped with that,” she said. “It wasn’t the only reason, there were other things that we had to improve, but we did come across as having a strong physics programme.”
Achieving accreditation also helps justify the purchase of a totally new QA platform, Sansourekidou explained. “The most important thing to explain to your administration is that if we don’t do things the way that our regulatory bodies advise, then not only will we lose our accreditation, but we will fall behind,” she said.
Sansourekidou emphasized that the efficiency gains conferred by SunCHECK were invaluable for the physics team, particularly for out-of-hours working. “We saw huge time savings for both monthly and daily QA,” she said. “It is a large investment, but improving efficiency through investment in software will really help the department in the long term.”
Hundreds of physicists gathered on the island of Helgoland in June to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the invention of quantum mechanics by the physicist Werner Heisenberg. The event – Helgoland 2025 – is a centrepiece of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology and it drew 300 quantum physicists with plenary talks and panel discussions ranging from philosophical puzzles like Wigner’s friend to state-of-the-art experiments in quantum computing.
In 1925 Heisenberg travelled to the island, off the coast of Germany, to recover from hay fever. While there he put together a mathematical framework for quantum mechanics that gave up the “visualizability” of quantum phenomena and strictly focused on “observables”. Heisenberg’s mythical stay on Helgoland is traditionally celebrated as the birth of quantum mechanics.
I attended the event as a philosopher of science with a background in quantum mechanics, and I was keen to learn more about participants’ views about the relationship between philosophy and physics. Quantum information theory lives at the intersection of philosophy and physics, as the field has been one of the primary drivers of renewed progress in the philosophy of quantum mechanics and its interpretations.
Renowned for being the financial powerhouse of quantum computing, quantum-information theory is flush with funding for building computers promising “quantum advantage”. Isaac Chuang from Massachusetts Institute of Technology bluntly told the audience that these computers currently do not serve any important economic function. The theory behind the boom in quantum computing has been equally important for philosophers and physicists looking for a compelling list of axioms from quantum mechanics, akin to Einstein’s postulates for relativity.
Like most scientific pursuits, quantum information did not begin with practical ends in mind, but with honest questions about nature. In the 1990s it was closer to foundational issues about the meaning of quantum mechanics. The growth of this philosophical-physical discipline called “quantum foundations”, while not a moneymaker, has made the field more introspective about concepts in desperate need of elucidation. Terms such as measurement, superposition, nonlocality and the metaphysics of quantum states are hotly debated in the community.
As has happened multiple times, Nobel laureates Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger sparred at Helgoland over the ontology of quantum states. Zeilinger defended the viewpoint that quantum states are states of knowledge, while Aspect defended nonlocality on pragmatic grounds. When Markus Aspelmeyer from the University of Vienna finished his talk on looking for gravitationally induced entanglement, he was asked what this phenomenon could mean if quantum states are only knowledge.
None of the talks attempted to fix a consensus about foundational questions. As the British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in his 1969 book On Certainty, “At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded.” Talks by Christopher Fuchs from the University of Massachusetts Boston and Robert Spekkens from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada underscored that we must be willing to dissect the theory to find what makes quantum mechanics truly quantum, and this will reveal what is special about nature. This patience for not jumping the gun on quantum ontology has paid off.
Spekkens showed that many phenomena taken to be uniquely quantum – the uncertainty relations, interference and wave–particle duality – are not the root of the mystery and can be accounted for classically. He referred to remaining phenomena as the “thin film” of quantum mechanics, such as Bell inequality violations, that cannot be accounted for in any classical theory. The pedagogical strategy of making quantum theory look as classical as possible was picked up in a panel discussion on the last day. The panellists suggested that physics educators not sensationalize the theory and use the most intuitive, “classical” reasoning available.
While at Helgoland, I had a discussion with philosopher Elise Crull from City College of New York and IBM quantum physicist Charles Bennett about the philosophy of science. Crull said how physics and philosophy can support each other, as physics was once a branch of natural philosophy. In fact, in her classes, Crull says she shows students how philosophically engaged the pioneers of quantum mechanics were – for example, how Bohr and Einstein were broadly familiar with Kantian philosophy.
Bennett, meanwhile, told the story of how he built up the field of quantum information theory by calculating the amount of energy necessary for computing with a quantum bit. He emphasized that one of a scientist’s great virtues is the joy of being wrong. We do not have to back down from the truth and we can also believe it is important to humanize others. If we can admit that we’re wrong, then non-scientists can too.
Renewed hope
Moral concerns surrounding the culture of science surfaced throughout the conference. It was lost on no-one, for instance, that the vast majority of participants at the conference were men. Crull made this explicit during the opening banquet, when she flashed a slide that slowly populated with the overlooked or outright forgotten voices of women in the invention of quantum mechanics. The slide was completely full by the end. The organization Diversity in Quantum noted that it is examining workplace diversity in quantum sciences and quantum technologies.
Through the celebration, the gravity of our current political environment crept into the otherwise momentous gathering. The invention of quantum mechanics converged with arguably the darkest moment in human history. Among its many moral atrocities, the political ascent of Nazism fractured the intellectual centres of Europe and severely damaged the reputation of German science. The conference saw numerous participants cite the importance of international collaboration and inclusivity in their talks. During the closing remarks of the conference, Časlav Brukner, who is scientific director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna, told the crowd, “Love is wise. Hatred is foolish.”
Natural philosophy Back in 1925, the island of Helgoland provided Werner Heisenberg a peaceful location to walk and think. A century later, it hosted hundreds of physicists discussing and contemplating quantum mechanics. (Courtesy: Matin Durrani)
I felt refreshed by the air of solidarity among participants after months of Donald Trump’s cartoonish vitriol towards education and academic freedom. However, I worry that scientists are still too confident that the acceptance of scientific truth is inevitable, as if the status quo will be easily restored in a few years. I have taught physics classes in rural areas where a distrust in scientific institutions resonated with my students, who openly doubted not only the science of evolution and climate change, but also the seemingly exotic features of relativity, or whether human beings landed on the Moon.
I often found that explaining the facts does not change students’ minds because the entire enterprise of science, the meaningfulness of scientific inquiry, often strikes non-scientists as alien and disconnected from the context in which they live. As suggested by Wittgenstein, many of our core beliefs go unexamined and end up in a blind spot. It is difficult to know what our common ground really is, but without it, facts are not salient to us.
They do not look like “facts” at all without a significant amount of education and preparation, not just in terms of technical background but also the culture of scientific inquiry. We require training and acculturation to know how a piece of information is supposed to count as “evidence” for a conclusion. Nothing inevitable follows from the possession or dissemination of facts. It takes a community of peers, not just experts, to recontextualize the facts in terms of our common ground.
I left the conference with renewed hope that quantum physics is thriving but also concerned that scientists are in for a long fight to depoliticize factual information. It is essential that this fight humanizes those who disagree with us as much as it draws a line in the sand against the spreading of falsehoods. Science is not really the default setting for how humans think about the world. As many historians of science point out, a belief in the possibility of science at all, over all its competitors in the history of the world, is quite extraordinary.
Atomic clocks are crucial to many modern technologies including satellite navigation and telecoms networks, and are also used in fundamental research. The most commonly used clock is based on caesium-133. It uses microwave radiation to excite an electron between two specific hyperfine energy levels in the atom’s ground state. This radiation has a very precise frequency, which is currently used to define the second as the SI unit of time.
Atomic clocks are currently being supplanted by the optical clocks, which use light rather than microwaves to excite atoms. Because optical clocks operate at higher frequencies, they are much more accurate than microwave-based timekeepers.
Despite the potential of optical atomic clocks, the international community has yet to use one to define the second. Before this can happen, metrologists must be able to compare the timekeeping of different types of optical clocks across long distances to verify that they are performing as expected. Now, as part of an EU-funded project, researchers have made a highly coordinated comparison of optical clocks across six countries in two continents: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and Japan.
Time flies
The study consisted of 38 comparisons (frequency ratios) performed simultaneously with ten different optical clocks. These were an indium ion clock at LUH in Germany; ytterbium ion clocks of two different types at PTB in Germany; a ytterbium ion clock at NPL in the UK; ytterbium atom clocks at INRIM in Italy and NMIJ in Japan; a strontium ion clock at VTT in Finland; and strontium atom clocks at LTE in France and at NPL and PTB.
To compare the clocks, the researchers linked the frequency outputs from the different systems using two methods: radio signals from satellites and laser light travelling through optical fibres. The satellite method used GPS satellite navigation signals, which were available to all the clocks in the study. The team also used customized fibre links, which allowed measurements with 100 times greater precision than the satellite technique. However, fibres could only be used for international connections between clocks in France, Germany and Italy. Short fibre links were used to connect clocks within institutes located in the UK and Germany.
A major challenge was to coordinate the simultaneous operation of all the clocks and links. Another challenge arose at the analysis stage because the results did not always confirm the expected values and there were some inconsistencies in the measurements. However, the benefit of comparing so many clocks at once and using more than one link technique is that it was often possible to identify the source of problems.
Wait a second
The measurements provided a significant addition to the body of data for international clock comparisons. The uncertainties and consistency of such data will influence the choice of which optical transition(s) to use in the new definition of the second. However, before the redefinition, even lower uncertainties will be required in the comparisons. There are also several other very different criteria that need to be met as well, such as demonstrating that optical clocks can make regular contributions to the international atomic time scale.
Rachel Godun at NPL, who coordinated the clock comparison campaign, says that repeated measurements will be needed to build confidence that the optical clocks and links can be operated reliably and always achieve the expected performance. She also says that the community must push towards lower measurement uncertainties to reach less than 5 parts in 1018 – which is the target ahead of the redefinition of the second. “More comparisons via optical fibre links are therefore needed because these have lower uncertainties than comparisons via satellite techniques”, she tells Physics World.
Pierre Dubé of Canada’s National Research Council says that the unprecedented number of clocks involved in the measurement campaign yielded an extensive data set of frequency ratios that were used to verify the consistency of the results and detect anomalies. Dubé, who was not involved in the study, adds that it significantly improves our knowledge of several optical frequency ratios and our confidence in the measurement methods, which are especially significant for the redefinition of the SI second using optical clocks.
“The optical clock community is strongly motivated to obtain the best possible set of measurements before the SI second is redefined using an optical transition (or a set of optical transitions, depending on the redefinition option chosen)”, Dubé concludes.
In materials science, the yield point represents a critical threshold where a material transitions from elastic to plastic deformation. Below this point, materials like glasses can return to their original shape after stress is removed. Beyond it, however, the deformation becomes permanent, reflecting irreversible changes in the material’s internal structure. Understanding this transition is essential for designing materials that can withstand mechanical stress without failure, an important consideration in fields such as civil engineering, aerospace and electronics.
Despite its importance, the yield point in amorphous materials like glasses has remained difficult to study due to the challenges in precisely controlling and measuring the stress and strain required to trigger it. Traditional mechanical testing methods often lack the resolution needed to observe the subtle atomic-scale changes that occur during yielding.
Schematic of experiment (Courtesy: Jacopo Baglioni/University of Padova)
In this study, the authors present a novel approach using X-ray irradiation to induce yielding in germanium-selenium glasses. This method allows for fine-tuned control over the elasto-plastic transition, enabling the researchers to systematically investigate the onset of plastic deformation. By combining experimental techniques with theoretical modelling, they characterize both the thermodynamic behaviour and the atomic-level structural and dynamical responses of the glasses during and after irradiation.
One of the key findings is that glasses processed through this method become stable against further irradiation, an effect that could be highly beneficial in environments with high radiation exposure, such as space missions or nuclear facilities. This work not only provides new insights into the fundamental physics of yielding in disordered materials but also opens up potential pathways for engineering radiation-resistant glassy materials.
Quantum repeaters are essential components of quantum networks, enabling long-distance entanglement distribution by temporarily storing quantum states. This temporary storage, facilitated by quantum memory, allows synchronization with other network operations and the implementation of error correction protocols, marking a significant advancement over classical repeaters, which merely amplify and retransmit signals.
Unlike classical systems, quantum repeaters mitigate photon loss, a major source of error in quantum communication. However, widely known quantum repeater designs often suffer from limitations such as the need for high phase stability and an inability to generate strongly entangled states.
Researchers’ concept map. (Courtesy: Hua-Lei Yin/Renmin University of China)
In this work, the authors propose a novel protocol based on post-matching, a technique originally developed in quantum cryptography to verify and secure transmitted information. Their theoretical framework offers new insights into both quantum communication and cryptographic systems, contributing to the advancement of quantum information theory and technology.
Nonlinearity refers to behaviour that deviates from a simple, proportional relationship and cannot be accurately described by linear equations. This concept is fundamental to understanding complex systems across various scientific disciplines, including meteorology, epidemiology, chemistry, and quantum mechanics.
In the field of quantum optics, achieving nonlinearity at the single-photon level is essential for the development of advanced quantum information protocols. Such nonlinearity enables more precise control over information transmission, facilitates faster and more scalable quantum networks, and enhances the security of quantum communication.
Artistic impression of experiment. (Courtesy: Lin Li/Huazhong University of Science and Technology)
Rydberg atoms, which are atoms in highly excited states, exhibit strong long-range interactions. These interactions, particularly the Rydberg blockade effect, make them promising candidates for inducing strong nonlinear interactions between photons. However, a key challenge lies in achieving this nonlinearity in a controllable and efficient manner, rather than relying on probabilistic or inefficient methods.
In this work, the authors introduce a novel approach for precisely engineering Rydberg states to enable continuous tuning of single-photon nonlinearity. This tunability represents a significant advancement, with potential applications spanning fundamental physics and the development of next-generation quantum technologies.
Supersymmetry is a theoretical framework in which every fermion and boson has a corresponding partner particle, known as a superpartner. These superpartners share the same energy spectrum but differ in their spin properties. The transformations between these particles are governed by mathematical operators called supercharges. Although superpartners have not yet been observed experimentally, their discovery would have significant implications for fundamental physics.
Twisted bilayer materials, such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, have attracted attention for their unusual electronic and topological properties. In this study, the authors investigate how supersymmetry manifests in these systems by analysing different energy modes associated with twisted bilayers.
They find that superpartners can exhibit both trivial and nontrivial topological energy bands. Furthermore, they demonstrate that supersymmetry can spontaneously break due to interactions between charged particles, known as Coulomb interactions.
This research provides new insights into the interplay between topology, symmetry, and interactions in low-dimensional materials, and opens up new possibilities for exploring supersymmetry in condensed matter systems.
The Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model is a theoretical framework used to describe systems of many interacting spins in an external magnetic field. It has been widely applied to study quantum phase transitions, entanglement, and collective spin behaviour. When extended to two modes, the model allows particles to tunnel between two degenerate energy levels, offering insights into quantum systems with multiple states.
In this study, the authors propose a chiral two mode version of the model using a pair of surface acoustic wave cavities. The chirality in the system preserves the separation between the two modes and prevents them from mixing. By applying specially designed chiral optical drives, the researchers are able to simulate long range asymmetric spin interactions.
This setup enables the simulation of complex quantum phenomena such as time crystal behaviour and ion trap like interactions, without the need for traditional trapping techniques. The work presents a novel approach to engineering and exploring chiral quantum systems using acoustic hybrid platforms.
Research group. (Courtesy: Zhou Yuan/Hubei University of Automotive Technology)
Developing a unified theory for liquid behaviour has long been a challenge due to the complex interactions between particles and the constantly changing dynamic disorder within liquids. Current approaches rely on empirical equations of state derived from experiments, which are often specific to individual systems and cannot be easily transferred to others. Compared to the well-established thermodynamic models for solids and gases, our understanding of liquids remains significantly underdeveloped.
In this study, the authors take a foundational step toward creating a general equation of state for liquids based on phonon theory. If successful, such a model could have wide-ranging applications in planetary science, industrial processes, chemical engineering, and condensed matter physics.
The authors provide a detailed explanation of how they approached this complex problem and apply their theoretical framework to experimental data for argon and nitrogen. The results show strong agreement, suggesting that the model has the potential for broad applicability.
This work represents a significant advance in the theoretical understanding of liquids and opens the door to a more unified and transferable approach to liquid thermodynamics.
One of the key challenges in building scalable quantum computers is managing noise during operations in order to improve accuracy. Decoherence, which arises from systematic errors and environmental interactions, disrupts quantum information and limits performance.
Several strategies exist to reduce decoherence. One approach is dynamical decoupling, which averages out noise through carefully timed control pulses. Another is quantum error correction, which detects and corrects faults in a quantum computation. In this study, the authors explore a third approach by leveraging the symmetry of quantum systems to create decoherence-free subspaces. These subspaces isolate quantum information from environmental noise.
The authors investigate how these decoherence-free subspaces can be integrated with existing error protection techniques. They construct a logical qubit within a decoherence-free subspace using a specially designed pulse sequence. When combined with dynamical decoupling, this method improves the fidelity of quantum states by up to 23% compared to physical qubits.
This research presents a practical and effective way to incorporate decoherence-free subspaces into quantum error management, offering a promising path toward more reliable quantum computing.
Time crystals are an intriguing state of matter in which a system exhibits periodic motion even in its lowest energy state. This challenges conventional expectations in physics. These systems arise when time translation symmetry is broken, a principle that normally ensures physical laws remain unchanged over time.
Unlike ordinary systems, time crystals can exhibit persistent oscillations without absorbing net energy over time. This makes them a subject of great interest in condensed matter physics and a promising candidate for future technologies such as quantum computing, sensing, superconductivity, and energy storage.
Time crystals can be classified as either discrete or continuous. An external periodic force drives discrete time crystals, while continuous time crystals emerge from the collective and self-sustained oscillations of particles.
In this study, the authors demonstrate a method for converting a continuous time crystal into a discrete one using a process known as subharmonic injection locking. This technique synchronizes the system’s oscillations with a fraction of the driving frequency. It enables the first observation of a transition between continuous and discrete time crystal states in a system that is not in equilibrium.
This research provides new insights into the behaviour of time crystals and introduces a powerful approach for controlling and manipulating these unusual phases of matter.
A strange metal is a type of material that exhibits unusual electrical properties, challenging our conventional understanding of how metals conduct electricity.
In these metals, electrons lose their individual identities, acting collectively in a soup, in which all particles are connected through quantum entanglement.
Prof. Chung, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Many so-called high temperature superconductors, such as doped cuprates, transition from their superconducting state to a strange metal state as they increase in temperature beyond a critical point. (Note that ‘high’ in this context means above −196.2 °C, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen!)
It has long been thought that revealing the mystery of the strange metal state is the key to understanding the mechanism for high-temperature conductivity. This could lead to understanding what would be required to make a truly room temperature superconductor.
In this new paper, the researchers used a cutting-edge theoretical framework to provide a microscopic description of the strange metal state, focusing on how local charge fluctuations near a critical transition, play a key role.
Their theoretical predictions for quantities such as the specific heat coefficient and the single-particle spectral function in the strange metal state agree well with experimental observations.
This work therefore brings us much closer to understanding how superconductivity emerges from the strange metal state in the cuprates – an open problem in condensed matter physics since the 1990s.
Most complex carbon molecules – such as those necessary for life – actually exist in two forms. The normal one and its mirror image. The left-handed version and the right-handed version.
Despite containing the same atoms, these two molecules usually have vastly different properties. For example, one might be used as a therapeutic drug, while the other could be inactive or even harmful.
Separating them is therefore very important for several reasons, particularly in the fields of chemistry, biology, and medicine. However, due to the lack of differences in the physical properties of the two molecules, this is usually quite difficult.
When any molecule is exposed to light, its quantum energy levels are split apart because of the interaction.
In this paper, the team found that when this light is circularly polarised, the splitting is different for the two mirrored molecules. They also went on to find that this effect led to different photochemical reactions for each molecule, further providing ways to distinguish them.
These effects could then be used as new methods for separating these mirrored molecules in medicine and beyond.
Ever since graphene was first studied in the 2000s, scientists have been interested 2D materials because of their new and interesting electrical and optical properties as well as their potential applications in superconductivity, magnetism and next generation electronics.
In recent years, a new family of these materials has emerged, with a strange new feature: correlated flat bands. Electrons in these bands have the same energy regardless of their movement or position within the material.
In this new work, the researchers used cutting edge theory and computer simulation techniques to understand these types of materials with and predict their properties. In particular, they focused on the interplay between smectic order and topological order.
The term smectic is used when talking about liquid crystals (that’s the same liquid crystal that you find in an LCD TV) . The word just means a state in which the particles are oriented in parallel and arranged in well-defined planes. It’s heavily influenced by the individual particles’ shape structure and charge.
Topological order on other hand is a global type of particle arrangement and is caused by the collective entanglement of all the particles in a system as a whole. It’s very much a quantum phenomenon, and is therefore sometimes unintuitive, strange, and complex.
Usually, these two different types of order are seen to compete with each other, but this study looks at what happens if they exist together.
Based on the results, the team expects several new phase transitions to occur in these systems.
Ultimately, experiments will be required to confirm their predictions. What’s for certain though, is that given how comprehensive this work is, the experimentalists now have a lot of work to do.
Shear-induced structural transitions happen when the structure of a material changes due to the application of force. It’s a phenomenon observed in various systems, including metals like aluminium and iron, molecular crystals such as ice and quartz, and even the Earth’s mantle.
A better understanding of how it works could lead to an improvement in the processing and fabrication of materials with more control on defect formation.
Measuring microscopic processes like this is usually challenging because electron microscopy cannot resolve individual atoms’ motions in bulk solids, and the strong shear force makes things especially difficult.
Here, the researchers used colloidal crystals, allowing them to observe transitions at the single-particle level. As a soft material (one that can easily be deformed), colloid crystals are particularly well-suited for this type of study.
They found that under certain conditions, a liquid layer formed around the growing new crystal structure. This phenomenon is known as “virtual melting” because it occurs well below the effective melting temperature. This liquid layer facilitates the transition by reducing the strain energy at the interface between the old and new crystal structures.
Virtual melting has been proposed in theory and simulation, but had never been directly observed in experiments before. The team’s results not only represent the first experimental observation of this process but also help us to better understand under what circumstances it takes place.
The study has potential applications across various fields, including metallurgy, materials science, and geophysics. The concept of virtual melting could also provide new a new way of thinking about stress relaxation and phase transitions in other systems.
Protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei are themselves made up of fundamental particles known as quarks. These quarks are held together by the strong interaction via force carriers called gluons.
When heavy atomic nuclei collide at high energies close to the speed of light, these constituent particles can break free from each other. The resulting substance, called a quark–gluon plasma, exhibits collective flowlike behaviour much like an everyday liquid. Unlike a normal viscous liquid however, these near-perfect fluids lose very little energy as they flow.
Researchers are very interested quark–gluon plasmas because they filled the entire Universe just after the Big Bang before matter as we know it was created.
The CMS Collaboration of scientists at CERN routinely create this state of matter for a very brief moment by colliding large nuclei with each other. In this paper, the researchers used sound waves as a way of understanding the plasma’s fundamental properties.
Sound is a longitudinal wave that produces compressions and rarefactions of matter in the same direction as its movement. The speed of these waves depends on the medium’s properties, such as its density and viscosity. It can, therefore, be used as a probe of the medium.
The team were able to show that the speed of sound in their quark–gluon plasma was nearly half the speed of light – a measurement they made with record precision compared to previous studies.
The results will help test our theories of the fundamental forces that hold matter together, allowing us to better understand matter in the very early Universe as well as future results at particle colliders.
Historically, the majority of studies in condensed matter physics have focused on Hermitian systems – closed systems that conserve energy. However, in reality, dissipative processes or non-equilibrium dynamics are commonly present and so real-world systems are anything but Hermitian.
Recently however people have begun to study non-Hermitian systems in detail and have found a range of interesting topological properties. The term topology was originally used to refer to a branch of mathematics describing geometric objects. Here, however, it means the study of the electron band structure in solids, as well as periodic motion more generally.
Topological arguments are often used to determine universal material properties such as conductivity or magnetic susceptibility. For example, topological insulators are insulating in the bulk but have conducting surface or edge states and can be used in a range of applications, such as quantum computing.
Previous work on non-Hermitian band topology has been restricted to one system at a time, or one property at a time. There’s been no way to link between materials or scenarios and no generalisation.
A research team formed of scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin, the Perimeter Institute, and Stockholm University have now brought everything together by using symmetry arguments to build a general, comprehensive theoretical framework for these exciting new systems.
Predictions made by the authors’ analysis will lead to a better understanding of condensed matter physics and hopefully to new developments in a range of fields including optics, acoustics, and electronics.
A molecular machine is an assembly of molecular components that produces mechanical movements in response to specific stimuli, similar to everyday objects like hinges and switches.
The power of what can be accomplished with these machines in biology is huge. They are responsible for everything from muscle contraction to DNA replication.
Attaining the same precise control over molecular motion with artificial molecular machines, is currently an active area of research.
Researchers from the August Chełkowski Institute of Physics have been studying one component of these machines – rotary molecular motors. As the name suggests, these machines convert chemical or electrochemical energy into mechanical work by rotating one part relative to another.
The team built their motors out of phenylene molecules within a solid crystal and studied them with a technique called broadband dielectric spectroscopy.
This measures how a material responds to a varying electrical field. In addition to imaging rotational motion, it can detect interactions between the molecular machine and its environment.
The team found several key markers within their data that reflected the strength of these interactions and therefore how well the molecular rotors were able to rotate. Using these markers will be important in optimising the design of future molecular rotors and brings us one step closer towards artificial molecular machines.
New techniques have recently allowed the study of the behaviour of electrons in a similar way to how photons are studied in traditional optics. This emerging area of research – called quantum electron optics – focuses on manipulating and controlling electron waves to create phenomena such as interference and diffraction.
These wavelike electrons are fundamentally quantum in nature. This means that they can emit light in unique ways when shaped and modulated by lasers.
In this work, the team found that the rate of light emission by electrons does not depend on the shape of the electron wave, while the quantum state of the emitted light does.
Essentially, this means that by changing the shape of the electron wave, they can control the characteristics of the light produced. The emitted light exhibits non-classical quantum properties, differing significantly from the light we encounter daily, which follows classical physics rules.
To produce a much stronger photon signal, the researchers also took advantage of superradiance, where multiple electrons emit light in a coordinated manner, resulting in a much stronger emission than the sum of individual emissions. Another purely quantum effect.
The excitement around this research is based on its potential to advance quantum computing and communication by providing new tools for controlling the many quantum states that are required to make them work.
It could also lead to the development of new light sources with special properties, useful in a whole range of scientific and technological applications.
Quantum systems tend to become less “quantum-y” as they interact with their environment. So when developing a mathematical description, it’s usually simpler just to view them as being closed off from their surroundings.
But ‘open’ systems are more realistic and sometimes even more interesting. Open quantum systems can be modelled using the so-called Lindblad equation, which describes the quantum evolution with time as both energy and coherence are lost to the environment.
Scientists from Tsinghua University have expanded the Lindblad equation to track the time evolution in an open system of a quantum property that that has become the hottest topic in condensed-matter physics: topology. Topology has formed the basis of numerous exotic states of matter over the last few decades. Now researchers show that an open system can undergo a topological transition as a result of dissipation, or loss.
Ensuring that different clocks are giving the same time is crucial to enable electronic systems to talk to each other. But what is the cost of this synchronisation at the thermodynamic level?
To answer this question, scientists from the East China Normal University in Shanghai studied two tiny resonating membranes inside an optical cavity. Such optomechanical systems can exhibit quantum properties even on a macroscopic scale, and so they’re an ideal platform for studying ultrasensitive metrology and nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Each of the membranes represented a nanomechanical clock, and the two could be synchronised by increasing their coupling strength by adding more light to the cavity. In this way, the team was able to measure the dependence of the degree of synchronisation on the overall entropy cost.
They hope that this experimental investigation will serve as a starting point to explore synchronisation in navigation-satellite and fibre-optic systems with the aim of improving clock performance.
The Earth is not a perfect sphere. This makes very precise modelling of our planet’s gravitational field rather tricky. To simplify the maths, scientists can consider a so-called Brillouin sphere: the smallest planet-centred sphere that completely encloses the mass composing the planet. In the case of the Earth, the Brillouin sphere touches the Earth at a single point—the top of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. The gravitational field outside the sphere can be accurately simulated by combining a series of simple equations called a spherical harmonic expansion.
But does this still hold true for the field inside the Brillouin sphere, which by definition includes the planet’s surface? Scientists from Ohio State University and the University of Connecticut say “no”. The team presented an analytical and numerical study that demonstrates clearly how and why the spherical harmonic expansion leads to prediction errors.
However, all is not lost. Their ultra-accurate simulations of the gravity field offer guidance toward a new mathematical foundation of gravity modelling. An upgraded simulator, which accounts for density variations within planets, will allow rigorous testing of proposed alternative ways to represent the gravity field beneath the Brillouin sphere.
Periodic changes in celestial bodies provide astronomers with a great deal of information about the universe. Sporadic alterations in a star’s brightness could be a signature of it being part of a binary system or indicate the presence of an orbiting planet. And the periodic rotation of objects in the Kuiper Belt tells us about planet formation and the development of our solar system. But these changes are rarely perfectly regular, so astronomers have developed a range of statistical methods to characterize aperiodic observations.
Now, mathematical statisticians from North Carolina State University have compared the robustness of these various methods for the first time. The team investigated the success of four different methods using the same simulated data, and were able to develop a list of recommended usage and limitations that will be essential guidance for all observation astronomers.
The World Health Organization has added the variant, known formally as XFG, to its monitoring list. A dry, irritated throat is among its main symptoms.
Intelligent read: the new diamond open-access journal AI for Science will meet the need for high-quality journals dedicated to artificial intelligence (courtesy: IOP Publishing)
Are you in the field of AI for science? Now, you have a new place to share your latest work to the world. IOP Publishing has partnered with the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory in China to launch a new “diamond” open-access journal to showcase how artificial intelligence (AI) is driving scientific innovation. AI for Science (AI4S)willpublish high-impact original research, reviews, and perspectives to highlight the transformative applications and impact of AI.
The launch of the interdisciplinary journal AI4S comes as AI technologies become increasingly integral to scientific research—from drug discoveryto quantum computing and materials science.
AI is one of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding areas of research so much so that in the last five years the topic has expanded by nearly ten times the rate of general scientific output.
Gian-Marco Rignanese from École Polytechnique de Louvain (EPL) in Belgium, who is the editor-in-chief of Al4S, says he is “very excited” by AI’s transformative potential for science. “It is really disrupting the way research is being performed. AI excels at processing and analyzing large volumes of data quickly and accurately,” he says. “This capability enables researchers to gain insights – or identify patterns – that were previously difficult or impossible to obtain.”
Rignaneseadds that AI is also accelerating simulations making them “closer to the real world” and large language models and neuro-linguistic programming are changing our way to apprehend the existing literature. “Generative AI holds a lot of promises,” he says.
Rignanese, whose research focuses on investigating and designing advanced materials for electronics, energy storage and energy production in which he uses first-principles simulations and machine learning, says that AI4S “not only targets high standards in terms of quality of the published research” but that it also recognizes the importance of sharing data and software.
The journal recognizes the rapid and multifaceted growth of AI. Notably, in 2025 both the chemistry and physics Nobel prizes went to the science of AI. Research funding is also increasing, with both the US Department of Energy (DOE) and National Science Foundation (NSF) allocating more resources to this field in 2025 than ever before.
In China, AI is emerging as a major priority in which the science community is poised to become a driving force in global development. Reflecting this, AI4S is co-led by editor-in-chief Weihua Wang from the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory. Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory is a new and leading institute for advanced materials research and innovationthat is preparing to focus intensively on AI in the near future.
“Our primary goal with AI for Science is to provide a global forum where scientists can share their cutting-edge research, innovative methodologies, and transformative perspectives,” says Wang“The field of AI in scientific research is not only expanding but also evolving at an unprecedented pace, making it vital for professionals to connect and collaborate.”
Wang expressed his optimistic vision for the future of AI in scientific research. “We want AI for Science to be instrumental in creating a more connected and collaborative global community of researchers,” he adds. “Together, we can harness the transformative power of AI to address some of the world’s most pressing scientific challenges and make the field even more impactful.”
Wangnotes that the inspiration behind the journal is the potential impact of AI on scientific discovery. “We believe that AI has the power to revolutionize the way research is conducted,” he says. “By providing a space for open dialogue and collaboration, we hope to enable scientists to leverage AI technologies more effectively, ultimately accelerating innovation and improving outcomes across various fields.”
The scope of AI4S is broad yet focused, catering to a wide array of interests within the scientific community. Wang explains that the journal covers various topics. These include: AI algorithms adapted for scientific applications; AI software and toolkits designed specifically for researchers; the importance of AI-ready datasets; and the development of embodied AI systems. These topics aim to bridge the gap between AI technology and its applications across disciplines like materials science, biology, and chemistry.
AI4S is also setting new standards for author experience. Submissions are reviewed by an international editorial boardtogether with the support of a 22-member advisory board composed of leading scientists and engineers. The journal also promises a rapid turnaround in which once accepted, articles are published within 24 hours and assigned a citable digital object identifier (DOI). In addition, from 2025 to 2027, all article publication charges are fully waived, paid for by the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory.
“AI is a new approach to science which is really exciting and holds a lot of promises,” adds Rignanese, “so I am convinced that there is room for a journal accompanying this new paradigm.”
For more information or to submit your manuscript, click here.
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