Quantum Science and Engineering at Cornell
Cornell’s Ithaca campus is home to a broad range of investigations into the quantum-mechanical nature of our world and universe, as well as the study of how to harness effects that are uniquely quantum mechanical for producing new technology in computing, communication, and sensing.
This website serves as a central source of information about who is working on quantum science and engineering at Cornell, what research areas we cover, and what quantum-related events are taking place.
Upcoming Events
New! Meehl Cryostat Available for Use
News and Breakthroughs
National Science Foundation announces Cornell-led AI Materials Institute
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with Intel, will invest $20 million over five years to establish the Artificial Intelligence Materials Institute (NSF AI-MI) at Cornell, as part of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes. The NSF announced the investment on July 29.
Directed by Eun-Ah Kim, principal investigator (PI) and the Hans A. Bethe Professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), NSF AI-MI will accelerate and transform the discovery of new materials to be used in sustainable energy, advanced electronics, environmental stewardship and quantum technologies by integrating human scientific expertise with AI methods.
Researchers from A&S, the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and Cornell Engineering make up the majority of the new institute’s leadership team, joined by researchers from Princeton University; the City College of the City University of New York (CUNY); the Advanced Science Research Center at CUNY; and Boston University.
Cornell–IBM collaboration advances quantum computing
The quantum computing revolution draws ever nearer, but the need for a computer that makes correctable errors continues to hold it back.
Through a collaboration with IBM led by Cornell, researchers have brought that revolution one step closer, achieving two major breakthroughs. First, they demonstrated an error-resistant implementation of universal quantum gates, the essential building blocks of quantum computation. Second, they showcased the power of a topological quantum computer in solving hard problems that a conventional computer couldn’t manage.
An international collaboration between researchers at IBM, Cornell, Harvard University and the Weizman Institute of Science demonstrated, for the first time, the ability to encode information by braiding – moving in a particular order – Fibonacci string net condensate (Fib SNC) anyons, which are exotic quasi-particles, in two dimensional space.
Physicists take step toward a holy grail for electron spins
For decades, ferromagnetic materials have driven technologies like magnetic hard drives, magnetic random access memories and oscillators. But antiferromagnetic materials, if only they could be harnessed, hold out even greater promise: ultra-fast information transfer and communications at much higher frequencies – a “holy grail” for physicists.
Now, researchers have taken a meaningful step towards utilizing antiferromagnets for new technologies. In “Spin-filter tunneling detection of antiferromagnetic resonance with electrically-tunable damping,” published July 10 in Science, they describe their innovative approach for both detecting and controlling the motion of spins within antiferromagnets using 2D antiferromagnetic materials and tunnel junctions.
If you’re working on quantum research at Cornell and would like to contribute material to this website, please email quantum@cornell.edu.