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.
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News and Breakthroughs
First quantum oscillations observed in gallium nitride holes
Gallium nitride, a semiconductor that can operate at high voltages, temperatures and frequencies, has enabled technologies from LED lighting to high-power electronics. Now Cornell researchers have observed a quantum property of the material for the first time, an advance that could expand its technological reach.
Much of gallium nitride’s value as a semiconductor lies in how quickly negatively charged electrons move through the material. But the material could become even more useful if scientists better understood its positively charged “holes,” which behave like mobile pockets of missing electrons but have been difficult to study. Understanding how to control the flow of the holes – as engineers have achieved in silicon semiconductors – would allow gallium nitride to reach its full potential.
In a new study published March 23 in Nature Electronics, researchers report the first observation of quantum oscillations of holes confined in a sheet – called two-dimensional hole gas – at the interface of gallium nitride and aluminum nitride.
Holding chaos at bay in the quantum world
Preserving quantum information is key to developing useful quantum computing systems. But interacting quantum systems are chaotic and follow laws of thermodynamics, eventually leading to information loss.
Physicists have long known of a strange exception, called dynamical freezing, when quantum systems shaken at precisely tuned frequencies evade these laws. But how long can this phenomenon postpone thermodynamics?
Not forever, but for an astonishingly long time, Cornell physicists have determined, giving the first quantitative answer. Using a new mathematical framework, they demonstrate that the frozen state can be stabilized long enough to be a useful strategy for preserving information in quantum systems.
Electrons stay put in layers of mismatched ‘quantum Legos’
Electrons can be elusive, but Cornell researchers using a new computational method can now account for where they go – or don’t go – in certain layered materials.
Physics and engineering researchers have confirmed that in certain quantum materials, known as “misfits” because their crystal structures don’t align perfectly – picture LEGOs where one layer has a square grid and the other a hexagonal grid – electrons mostly stay in their home layers.
This discovery, important for designing materials with quantum properties including superconductivity, overturns a long-standing assumption. For years, scientists believed that large shifts in energy bands in certain misfit materials meant electrons were physically moving from one layer to the other. But the Cornell researchers have found that chemical bonding between the mismatched layers causes electrons to rearrange in a way that increases the number of high-energy electrons, while few electrons move from one layer to the other.
If you’re working on quantum research at Cornell and would like to contribute material to this website, please email quantum@cornell.edu.