In new research appearing in Physical Review Letters, an international research team, including UC Davis physicists, has expanded the Fermi-Hubbard model, allowing for a more detailed exploration of materials and their properties. In the study, the researchers measured the equation of state for Ytterbium atoms in an optical lattice. Specifically, they used the fermionic isotope 173Yb, which is a metallic element with atoms that can adopt six possible states.

A UC Davis theoretical physicist studying the quantum nature of matter and a mathematician investigating the complexity of large datasets are the recipients of grants totaling more than $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program.

How did the universe become so good at hiding quantum physics? In two new papers appearing in Physical Review Research, UC Davis and Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers introduce a new model to explain the phenomenon of decoherence, when a system’s behavior shifts from being explainable by quantum mechanics to being explainable by classical mechanics. The new model divorces the arrow of time from the go-to theoretical tool for understanding decoherence: the Caldeira-Leggett model.