Quantum Everything

The word “quantum” can cause shrugs in even highly educated shoulders, but with a “discrete quantity” of knowledge, quantum physics, and the technologies based on it, can be illuminated for everyone.

Let’s start with the theory

There once was a classical theory
Of which quantum disciples were leery.
They said, 鈥淲hy spend so long
On a theory that鈥檚 wrong?鈥�
Well, it works for your everyday query!

In science’s ongoing effort to describe everything, there have always been small, troublesome gaps.

There is classical mechanics

It describes so much of our everyday world, but can’t always accurately describe the very big or the very small.

There are the theories of relativity

They describe so much about the universe, from gravity to time, but can’t always accurately describe the smallest scales.

There is quantum mechanics

It describes the atomic and subatomic scales, like photons and electrons, but begins to raise philosophical problems at the human scale.

Learn from the experts

The short answer

What is quantum physics?

Students and faculty from across 蜜桃影像 explain the basics of quantum physics and why it鈥檚 so important.

A glass wall with equations etched in it

The long answer

How does it work (and not work)?

“Quantum physics works phenomenally well. By almost any measure it is the most successful scientific theory of all time … but, there is a problem,” says science reporter and astrophysicist Adam Becker.

But Neils Bohr, what is it good for?

Nobel Prize winning quantum thought leader Neils Bohr could not have imagined the amazing applications that quantum physics is making possible.

A nano-optic endoscope that uses a metalens could play a major role in lung cancer diagnosis.

Better lenses

Lenses and filters are created using techniques that鈥攚hile refined鈥攈ave been largely unchanged for centuries.

Metalenses manipulate light at the microscopic level, offering compactness and new functionality that isn’t possible with traditional lenses and filters.

A glass orb on a glowing grid. Very evocative of future stuff.

Better credit cards

Researchers created a material that can do many of the things a magnetic strip can do, but without the need for the often-fragile magnetic force.

A person with gloves labeling test tubes

Better diagnostics

A process used to find and identify small molecules in biological samples such as blood and urine can struggle to identify molecules that haven鈥檛 been catalogued already鈥攖he vast majority of them.

So medical researchers and quantum scientists collaborated on a new algorithm for this process that draws from both quantum computing and classical machine learning.

Better computers

Imagine an un-hackable communications system that could make data breaches a thing of the past. Quantum computing will usher in game-changing innovations in health care, infrastructure, security, drug development, climate-change prediction, machine learning, financial services, and more.

We’ve helped advance quantum science a bit

A qubit to be more specific. The quantum bit is the fundamental unit for quantum computing, and is encoded in a physical system, like the spin of an electron or an atom’s energy state.

Each qubit increases the complexity of problem the computer can solve exponentially. So, while something like the 16-bit Super Nintendo was twice as powerful as the 8-bit NES, a 51-qubit computer can solve problems 200 trillion times more complicated than a 3-qubit computer.

An illustration of subatomic stuff. looks like balls and sticks

2010
2012
2012
2017
2018
2018
2019
2021
2021
2022

Making quantum computers a commercial reality

Can a startup take quantum computers from the lab to the world?

Fun with physics

Learn some of the signs

Learn quantum sign language

A collaboration between the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials and The Learning Center for the Deaf is developing quantum-related topics in American Sign Language.

Get entangled in a 蜜桃影像 classroom

Explore our recorded lectures and talks on the world of quantum science.

蜜桃影像