Science can be difficult to explain to the public. In fact, any subfield of science can be difficult to explain to another scientist who studies in a different area. Explaining a theoretical science ...

Topological phases are unusual states of matter that give rise to properties protected by a material's overall structure (i.e., "topology"), as opposed to microscopic details. These phases are of ...

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? “The material fluctuates between two different states, as if it cannot decide which ...

Light that twists as it travels and materials whose internal order is knotted like a pretzel are starting to collide in the lab, and the result is a new class of strange, topological effects. Instead ...

In a quiet corner of low-temperature physics, researchers have stumbled on a phase of matter that seems to break one of the field’s unwritten rules: it works without well-defined particles. Instead of ...

Non-zero energy exchange with the environment can transform originally Hermitian systems into non-Hermitian ones. Beyond introducing complexity into the energy spectrum, non-Hermiticity can also ...

In a breakthrough bridging photonics and condensed matter physics, an international research team has unveiled a new optical method to engineer and control topological solitons—such as skyrmions and ...

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it has invented an entirely new kind of quantum computer. Its new quantum chip, Majorana 1, is a quantum processor analogous to transistors in classical computers’ ...

Topological states of matter are a particular class of non-Landau states, which are characterized by the notion of topological order. For example in the fractional quantum Hall effect, the topological ...