In a rare non-magnetic kagome material, a topological metal cools into a superconductor through a sequence of novel charge density waves. Researchers have discovered a complex landscape of electronic states that can co-exist on a kagome lattice, resembling those in high-temperature superconductors, a team of Boston College physicists reports in an advance electronic publication of the journal Nature. The focus of the study was a bulk single crystal of a topological kagome metal, known as CsV3Sb5 – a metal that becomes superconducting below 2.5 degrees Kelvin, or minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit. The exotic material is built from atomic planes composed of Vanadium atoms arranged on a so-called kagome lattice – described as a pattern of interlaced triangles and hexagons –  stacked on top of one another, with Cesium and Antimony spacer layers between the kagome planes. The material offers a window into how the physical properties of quantum solids — such as light transmission, elec...

One of the most fundamental features of quantum physics is Bell nonlocality: the fact that the predictions of quantum mechanics cannot be explained by any local (classical) theory. This has remarkable conceptual consequences and far-reaching applications in quantum information. However, in our everyday experience, macroscopic objects seem to behave according to the rules of classical physics, and the correlations we see are local. Is this really the case, or can we challenge this view? In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, scientists from the University of Vienna and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have shown that it is possible to fully preserve the mathematical structure of quantum theory in the macroscopic limit. This could lead to observations of quantum nonlocality at the macroscopic scale. Our everyday experience tells us that macroscopic systems obey classical physics. It is therefore natural to expect t...