We experimentally demonstrate encrypted image transmission over 40 km of optical fiber with high decryption fidelity and achieve a 10 Gbit/s optical encryption rate using a lithium niobate photonic chip. This represents the first implementation of public-key encryption at the physical optical layer. 

Quanta Books is delighted to announce two new upcoming books by mathematician Terence Tao and theoretical physicist David Tong. Six Math Essentials will be Tao’s first math book written for a popular audience. Tong’s book, Everything Is Fields, will illuminate quantum field theory — the physics that explains the fundamental makeup of the universe — drawing from Tong’s distinguished track record as a quantum field theorist and public communicator.

Metallenes are atomically thin metals, whose unique properties make them extremely promising for nanoscale applications. However, their extreme thinness makes them also flimsy. Now, researchers at the Nanoscience Center of the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) have succeeded in identifying the principles that can maximize their stability. The solution may open up opportunities in materials design, nano-electronics, energy production, and biomedicine. 

Interactions among viruses can help them succeed inside their hosts or impart vulnerabilities that make them easier to treat. Scientists are learning the ways viruses mingle inside the cells they infect, as well as the consequences of their socializing. Although it is debatable whether viruses are living things, they do compete, cooperate and share genome materials that can sometimes alter their responses to antiviral drugs, result in new variants or play a role in virus evolution. A paper today in Nature Ecology & Evolution by UW Medicine scientists looks at the evolution of poliovirus resistance to a promising experimental antiviral drug, pocapavir. While it seemed counterintuitive, the researchers demonstrated that lowering the potency of pocapavir could improve the situation by enhancing the survival of enough susceptible viruses to continue sensitizing the resistant ones.

Future events such as the weather or satellite trajectories are computed in tiny time steps, so the computation must be both efficient and as accurate as possible at each step lest errors pile up. A Kobe University team now introduces a new method that uses deep learning for creating tailored, accurate simulations that respect physical laws, while also being more computationally efficient.

In a new article, scientists from UChicago and universities in the US and EU look to computing’s past to chart quantum’s future. Their conclusion: the technology is maturing rapidly, and the next challenges are related to scaling.