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Virtually all membrane proteins have been reported to be organized as clusters on cell surfaces, when in fact many of them are just single proteins which have been counted multiple times. A method developed at TU Wien (Vienna) can now distinguish between both cases. Light cannot be used to image any structures smaller than half its wavelength - for a long time, this was considered to be the ultimate resolution limit in light microscopy.

In an international first, a research team of experimental physicists led by Francesca Ferlaino and theoretical physicists led by Peter Zoller has measured long-range magnetic interactions between ultracold particles confined in an optical lattice. Their work, published in Science, introduces a new control knob to quantum simulation.

Scientists from TU Wien (Vienna) are proposing a new method for creating extremely strong spin currents. They are essential for spintronics, a technology that could replace today's electronics. A laser pulse hits nickel (green). Spin-up-electrons (red) change into silicon (yellow). Electrons with both spin-orientations change back from silicon into nickel.

When current comes in discrete packages: Viennese scientists unravel the quantum properties of the carbon material graphene. In 2010 the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for the discovery of the exceptional material graphene, which consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice.

Elemental carbon appears in many different forms, including diamond and graphite. Their unique structural, electrical and optical properties have a broad range of potential applications in composite materials and nanoelectronics. Within the "carbon family", only carbyne, the truly one-dimensional form of carbon, has not yet been synthesized; although studied for the last 50 years, its extreme instability in ambient conditions has rendered the final experimental proof of its existence elusive.

From the coating of electronic or pharmaceutical products to thin plastic films - a new technique developed by TU Wien enables coating processes to be quality controlled in real time. When covering large areas with very thin layers of exactly the right thickness in the micrometre or nanometre range, it is easy to make mistakes.

Physicists around Anton Zeilinger have, for the first time, evaluated the almost 100-year long history of quantum delayed-choice experiments - from the theoretical beginnings with Albert Einstein to the latest research works in the present. The extensive study now appeared in the renowned journal "Reviews of Modern Physics".

Researchers at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), the University of Vienna, and the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona have achieved a new milestone in quantum physics: they were able to entangle three particles of light in a high-dimensional quantum property related to the "twist" of their wavefront structure.

Quantum physics is counterintuitive. Many of the phenomena in the quantum world do not have a classical analog: In the quantum world, a coin is not either heads or tails - but can have both properties at the same time. For a better understanding of such phenomena, laboratory experiments are indispensable.

Quantum objects cannot just be understood as the sum of their parts. This is what makes quantum calculations so complicated. Scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) have now calculated Bose-Einstein-condensates, revealing the secrets of the particles? collective behaviour. Quantum systems are extremely hard to analyse if they consist of more than just a few parts.

Using a new synthesis procedure developed at TU Wien, it is now possible to produce the extremely resistant material polyimide in the form of angular particles for the first time. Polyimides withstand extreme heat and chemically aggressive solvents, while being considerably less dense than metals. That is why they are very popular in industry, for example as an insulation layer on PCBs or in aerospace applications.

Pole dancing water molecules - Researchers at the TU Wien have seen this remarkable phenomenon on the surface of an important technological material. Perovskites are materials used in batteries, fuel cells, and electronic components, and occur in nature as minerals. Despite their important role in technology, little is known about the reactivity of their surfaces.

A team of international researchers performed an experiment in the Vienna Hofburg to observe quantum entanglement with unprecedented certainty. Researchers in Anton Zeilinger's group from the Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information division of the University of Vienna physics department and from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) Vienna of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), in an international collaboration, have demonstrated a definitive confirmation of quantum entanglement.

Theoretical physicists in Innsbruck have proposed a scalable quantum computer architecture. The new model, developed by Wolfgang Lechner, Philipp Hauke and Peter Zoller, overcomes fundamental limitations of programmability in current approaches that aim at solving real-world general optimization problems by exploiting quantum mechanics.

Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) have figured out how a platinum catalyst works. Its remarkable properties are not just due to the platinum, the iron-oxide substrate beneath also plays a role. Left: Tiny platinum nanoparticles on an iron oxide surface. center: H2 gas leads to trenches in the surface.

Quantum physics tell us that even massive particles can behave like waves, as if they could be in several places at once. This phenomenon is typically proven in the diffraction of a matter wave at a grating. In a European collaboration, researchers carried this idea to the extreme and observed the delocalization of molecules at the thinnest possible grating, a mask milled into a single layer of atoms.

A team of physicists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have demonstrated a new quantum computation scheme in which operations occur without a well-defined order. The researchers led by Philip Walther and Caslav Brukner used this effect to accomplish a task more efficiently than a standard quantum computer.

Plants and bacteria make use of sunlight with remarkably high efficiency: nine out of ten absorbed light particles are being put to use in an ordinary bacterium. For years, it has been a pressing question of modern research whether or not effects from quantum physics are responsible for this outstanding performance of natural light harvesters.

[ Florian Aigner A theoretical trick allows scientists to describe quantum states of thousands of atoms. If standard methods were used, all storage capacity in the world would not be enough to do this. For a long time, quantum experiments were only carried out with a small number of particles. Even the behaviour of single atoms or molecules can be very hard to describe.

[ Florian Aigner Nanostructures etched into the surface: TU Wien develops a new processing technology to improve the electrical properties of glass ceramic circuit boards As you ease your foot off the accelerator, a radar sensor detects how far away you are from the other cars and intelligently adjusts your speed appropriately.