Mastodawn

Opening a new window into superconductivity by reimagining a classic tool For more than a century, condensed matter physics has grappled with one of its greatest unsolved cha... https://phys.org/news/2026-03-window-superconductivity-reimagining-classic-tool.html #PostSapiens #condensedmatter

Opening a new window into superconductivity by reimagining a classic tool

For more than a century, condensed matter physics has grappled with one of its greatest unsolved challenges: how to build superconductors that operate at room temperature and transmit electricity with no loss. Now, in a paper published in Nature, a team of Harvard physicists has reported new insights into why one promising superconductor has yielded mysteriously uneven results.

Phys.org

Michael Herbst Mar 12

Released DFTK version 0.7.22: https://dftk.org/releases with initial support for exact exchange and #HybridDFT and notable #performance engineering for #GPU-based #response calculations. Special thanks to Augustin Bussy (CSCS) and Tobias Schäfer (TU Wien) as well as all other #dftk contributors.

#densityfunctionaltheory #condensedmatter #dfpt #physics #simulation #planewave

Releases · JuliaMolSim/DFTK.jl

Density-functional toolkit. Contribute to JuliaMolSim/DFTK.jl development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

Columbus - Feeds Mar 5

Electric field tunes vibrations to ease heat transfer

Electric field tunes vibrations to ease heat transfer

New research from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in collaboration with The Ohio State University and Amphenol Corporation, challenges conventional understanding about controlling heat flow in solid materials. The study, published in PRX Energy, shows that applying an electric field to a ceramic material changes how phonons (tiny vibrations that carry heat) behave.

Phys.org

Hendrik Weimer Feb 24

All interesting physics is decentralized and local. If there was a central algorithm deciding what physics is allowed, we wouldn't have the enormous diversity and beauty of the universe emerging out of something like two dozen fundamental physical constants.

I think this decentralized nature is also important when trying to understand physical systems. When we came up with our definition of topological order based on error correction (https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.106.085143), it was absolutely crucial to use a decentralized algorithm and not a centralized one where you feed in the positions of all errors at once. It's the fediverse approach to error correction, if you like.

#physics #condensedmatter #condmat #fediverse

QUINTO project Feb 8

It seems like the basic building blocks of a topological quantum computer were demonstrated experimentally for the first time.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20956

The promise of topological quantum computer – which would be resistant to errors because it would encode quantum information using trajectories of weird “quasiparticles” called anyons – is one of the main motivations why people investigate topological orders like fractional quantum Hall effect or spin liquids. The catch about this study is that, as far as I understand, it lacks the required stability, which arises from the fact that the topological order is exhibited by the ground state of the system (lowest energy), and the anyons are lowest excitations (lowest energies above the ground state). Here, as far as I understand, the topologically ordered state was created inside a quantum computer, with no reference to energy. Still, this is one step closer to realizing topological quantum computation. Also, the study uses quantum gates based both on anyon braiding – “winding” their trajectories around each other – and “fusion”, i.e. merging anyons with each other. I was not aware you can use fusion in this way.

#science #physics #quantum #CondensedMatter #CondMat #QuantumComputing #TopologicalOrder #anyons

Universal Topological Gates from Braiding and Fusing Anyons on Quantum Hardware

Topological quantum computation encodes quantum information in the internal fusion space of non-Abelian anyonic quasiparticles, whose braiding implements logical gates. This goes beyond Abelian topological order (TO) such as the toric code, as its anyons lack internal structure. However, the simplest non-Abelian generalizations of the toric code do not support universality via braiding alone. Here we demonstrate that such minimally non-Abelian TOs can be made universal by treating anyon fusion as a computational primitive. We prepare a 54-qubit TO wavefunction associated with the smallest non-Abelian group, $S_3$, on Quantinuum's H2 quantum processor. This phase of matter exhibits cyclic anyon fusion rules, known to underpin universality, which we evidence by trapping a single non-Abelian anyon on the torus. We encode logical qutrits in the nonlocal fusion space of non-Abelian fluxes and, by combining an entangling braiding operation with anyon charge measurements, realize a universal topological gate set and read-out, which we further demonstrate by topologically preparing a magic state. This work establishes $S_3$ TO as simple enough to be prepared efficiently, yet rich enough to enable universal topological quantum computation.

arXiv.org

Prathamesh Deshmukh Jan 28

Hey there, I am Prathamesh Deshmukh, a PhD scholar at UGC-DAE CSR, Mumbai, working in condensed matter physics. My research focuses on magnetoelectric coupling in multiferroic composites and their dielectric, magnetic, and neutron diffraction studies.

Beyond synthesis, I specialise in scientific instrumentation. I designed the Advanced Transport Measurement System (ATMS), a low-cost cryogenic setup for precision transport measurements, and developed PICA, an open-source Python suite for lab automation.

I will be completing my PhD this year and am seeking postdoctoral research opportunities that would leverage my expertise in experimental physics, scientific instrumentation, and software development.

https://prathameshdeshmukh.site

#Introduction #CondensedMatter #Physics #NeutronScattering #OpenScience #Python #LabAutomation #Instrumentation #Postdoc #AcademicMastodon

Prathamesh Deshmukh | Physics PhD, Researcher & Scientific Programmer

Explore the portfolio of Prathamesh Deshmukh, featuring research in condensed matter physics, scientific publications, and programming projects.

Prathamesh Deshmukh's Portfolio

QUINTO project Jan 27

I am still alive, and there are big news for the project – news that are over one month overdue, but I was so focused on writing grant proposals that I couldn’t find time to write about it. Long story short: we finished the preprint of our spin liquid paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.05630). This work originated much before I came to Darrick Chang’s group, thus I am only a third author, but I did my part within the QUINTO project.

What is it about? Basically, atoms can make photons interacting with each other. In general, the interaction of many simple objects can lead to unusual, counterintuitive behavior. For example, many interacting electrons can form fractional quantum Hall states, and many interacting spins can form spin liquids – both being complicated quantum states, whose unusual properties manifest themselves with emergence of “quasiparticles” – objects that behave like individual particles, although in reality they are collective states of many particles. These quasiparticles can behave unlike any elementary particle found in nature – for example, they can have a fraction of single electron charge, and be neither bosons nor fermions but “anyons”. In the paper, we ask: can we observe similar effects with atoms and light?

[1/3]

#physics #science #quantum #CondMat #CondensedMatter #QuantumOptics #ColdAtoms #AtomicPhysics

Hendrik Weimer Jan 26

Topologically ordered states of matter are characterized by fascinating non-local quantum correlations in the many-body wave function. However, deciding whether a quantum state is topologically ordered or not is extremely difficult. A large part of the problem is that so far, signatures like the topological entanglement entropy could not be efficiently computed.

We are happy to present a framework for the computation of topological order that provides an exponential speedup over existing methods: https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ae3598

#quantum #physics #condensedmatter #condmat

Radware Bot Manager Captcha

MatMat Jan 13

New publication https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-025-01880-3

Our work on AD-DFPT, a unification of #automaticdifferentiation with linear response for #densityfunctionaltheory is published in npj Computational Materials. We show examples for #property predition, #uncertainty propagation, the design of #materials and #machinelearning of new #dft models. #condensedmatter #dftk

HybridMind42 & Marvin the Cat Dec 26

🧵 Post 2 / 3 — Removing Hand-Waving
🌀 Where the hand-waving usually starts
In many explanations we’re told: • “electrons form clouds”
• “bonds form by overlap”
• “Cooper pairs move without resistance”
All true — but often mechanically vague.
Using explicit phase, boundary, and flux constraints, many topics become clearer without contradicting known physics: electron orbitals, bonding (covalent/ionic/metallic), reaction selectivity, and even superconductivity (Cooper pairs, flux exclusion).
Probability remains — but it’s no longer doing all the explanatory work.
🌀
#Chemistry #PhysicalChemistry #CondensedMatter #Superconductivity
#BeyondHandWaving #MechanicsAndProbability