An ion trap helped create a quantum defect in two places at once
ANDREW BROOKES, NATIONAL PHYSICAL LABORATORY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Exotic quantum rifts have been created with charged atoms, and they exist in a superposition of being in two places at once. This is a first step towards better understanding the behaviour of such quantum defects in everything from materials to an entire universe.
Defects are ubiquitous – think of tears in textiles or cloudy imperfections in shiny crystals – but in quantum systems, they can have the extra property of being topological. That means the overall structure of the…