Gang Li

Ordinary computer memory constantly uses energy to store ones and zeros. Superconductors, on the other hand, carry current with zero loss — if you could build memory from them, it would barely draw any power. The catch is that superconductors can't remember: their state changes too easily. Uranium ditelluride crystals turned out to be the exception.

In the woven basket pattern, where the strands interlace into triangles, some electrons get stuck in place, like coins wedged in the gaps of the weave. Other electrons roam freely across the whole basket, like light filling a room. Physicists have long sought the moment when these two types of electrons start to influence each other, and now it has been found in the material CsCr6Sb6.

A single photon is like a perfectly smooth brick from which quantum technologies can be built. But to build a house, you need thousands of identical bricks. Rubidium atoms are natural emitters: each atom emits photons of exactly one wavelength, like a tuning fork that always produces a single note.