Physics is often about recognizing patterns, sometimes repeated across vastly different scales. For instance, moons orbit planets in the same way planets orbit stars, which in turn orbit the center of a galaxy. When researchers first studied the structure of atoms, they were tempted…Read More
Over the past several decades, researchers have been making rapid progress in harnessing light to enable all sorts of scientific and industrial applications. From creating stupendously accurate clocks to processing the petabytes of information zipping through data centers, the demand for turnkey technologies that…Read More
Physics is full of pesky limits. There are speed limits, like the speed of light. There are limits on how much matter and energy can be crammed into a region of space before it collapses into a black hole. There are even limits on…Read More
Questioning assumptions and imagining new explanations for familiar phenomena are often necessary steps on the way to scientific progress. For example, humanity’s understanding of gravity has been overturned multiple times. For ages, people assumed heavier objects always fall quicker than lighter objects. Eventually, Galileo…Read More
Our computer age is built on a foundation of semiconductors. As researchers and engineers look toward a new generation of computers that harness quantum physics, they are exploring various foundations for the burgeoning technology. Almost every computer on earth, from a pocket calculator to…Read More
A puzzling form of superconductivity that arises only under strong magnetic fields has been mapped and explained by a research team of UMD, NIST and Rice University including professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. Their findings, published in Science July 31, detail how uranium…Read More
John Mather, a College Park Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland and a senior astrophysicist at NASA, has made a career of looking to the heavens. He has led projects that have revealed invisible stories written across the sky and helped us…Read More
While breakthrough results over the past few years have garnered headlines proclaiming the dawn of quantum supremacy, they have also masked a nagging problem that researchers have been staring at for decades: Demonstrating the advantages of a quantum computer is only half the battle;…Read More
University of Maryland Professor Cheng Gong (ECE), along with his postdocs Dr. Ti Xie, Dr. Jierui Liang and collaborators in Georgetown University (Professor Kai Liu group), UC Berkeley (Professor Ziqiang Qiu), University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Professor David Mandrus group) and UMD Physics (Professor Victor M. Yakovenko), have made…Read More
1 When Superfluids Collide, Physicists Find a Mix of Old and New
2 With Passive Approach, New Chips Reliably Unlock Color Conversion
3 Researchers Identify Groovy Way to Beat Diffraction Limit
4 Researchers Imagine Novel Quantum Foundations for Gravity
5 Researchers Spy Finish Line in Race for Majorana Qubits
7 A Cosmic Photographer: Decades of Work to Get the Perfect Shot
8 New Protocol Demonstrates and Verifies Quantum Speedups in a Jiffy
9 Work on 2D Magnets Featured in Nature Physics Journal
Department News
Young Suh Kim, 1935 - 2025 Professor Emeritus Young Suh Kim died on October 25, 2025 at age 90. Prof. Kim's research was dedicated to elucidating the connections between relativity, quantum mechanics, and the symmetries that underlie the laws of nature. Born in Korea in 1935, Prof. Kim earned his Bachelor of Science…Read More
Chung Yun Chang, 1929 - 2025 Professor Emeritus Chung Yun Chang died on October 29, 2025, in San Diego, California. He was 95. Prof. Chang was a native of rural Hunan, China. He received a bachelor’s degree at National Taiwan University and a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1965. Prof. Chang…Read More