Noah Schnitzer

Quantum materials are like finicky flowers: they only bloom in the cold. At room temperature, they hide their unusual properties, but when deeply cooled, they become superconductors or change their magnetic behavior. To understand how they work, you need to examine their atoms in the very cold where these properties reside.

In an ordinary crystal, atoms stand in neat rows like soldiers on a parade ground. Any deviation from this formation is usually considered harmful: disorder scatters waves and quickly dampens collective motions of particles.