Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have teleported a computer circuit instruction known as a quantum logic operation between two separated ions (electrically charged atoms), showcasing how quantum computer programs could carry out tasks in future large-scale quantum networks. Quantum teleportation transfers data from one quantum system (such as an ion)…
NIST Tool Enables More Comprehensive Tests on High-risk Software
We entrust our lives to software every time we step aboard a high-tech aircraft or modern car. A long-term research effort guided by two researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their collaborators has developed new tools to make this type of safety-critical software even safer. Augmenting an existing software toolkit, the…
Simulations Suggest Graphene can Stretch to be a Tunable Ion Filter
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have conducted simulations suggesting that graphene, in addition to its many other useful features, can be modified with special pores to act as a tunable filter or strainer for ions (charged atoms) in a liquid. The concept, which may also work with other membrane materials,…
New Design Lets Micro-clock Resonators Ring Like a Bell
You can’t hear most of them, but the world is running on different kinds of mechanical oscillations. For example, inside the average electronic wristwatch is a sealed canister containing a 3 mm long quartz crystal resonator. In response to electrical feedback, the crystal continuously vibrates about 33,000 times per second. The remarkable stability of that…
Closing Tech Gaps Can Fortify Advanced Manufacturing
To spur significant innovation and growth in advanced manufacturing, as well as save over $100 billion annually, U.S. industry must rectify currently unmet needs for measurement science and “proof-of-concept” demonstrations of emerging technologies. This is the overall conclusion reached by economic studies funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of four advanced…
Atomic Beltway Could Solve Problems of Cosmic Gravity
When is a traffic jam not a traffic jam? When it’s a quantum traffic jam, of course. Only in quantum physics can traffic be standing still and moving at the same time. A new theoretical paper from scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland suggests that intentionally…
Measuring Tiny Forces with Light
Photons are bizarre: They have no mass, but they do have momentum. And that allows researchers to do counterintuitive things with photons, such as using light to push matter around. Recently, a group of scientists led by chemist Gordon Shaw at NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) has been taking advantage of this property to develop…
NIST’s Compact Gyroscope May Turn Heads
Shrink rays may exist only in science fiction, but similar effects are at work in the real world at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. After successfully miniaturizing both clocks and magnetometers based on the properties of individual atoms, NIST physicists have now turned to precision gyroscopes, which measure rotation. The NIST team has demonstrated a compact…
New Magneto-Ionics Could Yield Nonvolatile Computer Memory & Quick-Dimming Windows
There is a crack in everything, Leonard Cohen sang; that’s how the light gets in. Now a team led by scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has explored the properties of a promising class of materials with new capabilities that depend on those cracks. Their results could help open the way…
NIST’s Super Quantum Simulator ‘Entangles’ Hundreds of Ions
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have “entangled” or linked together the properties of up to 219 beryllium ions (charged atoms) to create a quantum simulator. The simulator is designed to model and mimic complex physics phenomena in a way that is impossible with conventional machines, even supercomputers. The techniques could…