Photon Devices Could Outperform Traditional Computers

Quantum computers will be able to perform tasks that silicon-based computers wouldn’t be able to do, like cracking the codes that protect bank transactions. Several research teams have revealed solid evidence that quantum physics does embody a level of complexity that classical computers could never match. The new devices these groups have built are much simpler to build than quantum computers but could some day perform some of the same tasks.

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Samarium Hexoboride Behaves Like a Topological Insulator

Samarium hexoboride, a compound that had been poorly understood and that can gain conducting properties at very low temperatures, may be a topological insulator in its bulk form, conducting electricity on its surface while the rest of the material behaves like an insulator.

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Evidence of Elusive Majorana Fermions Raises Possibilities for Quantum Computing

It’s been reported that researchers in the Leo Kouwenhoven group, based out of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, might have beaten several competing teams in solid state and high energy physics to find the elusive Majorana fermions, a mysterious quantum-mechanical particle that might have some applications in quantum computing.

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