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Journal Reference:

1. Sakura Hiramoto, Koki Funatsu, Kensuke Konishi, Haruhiko Dekura, Naoya Tajima, Toshio Naito. Universal Features of Magnetic Behavior Originating from Linear Band Dispersion: α-BETS2X and α′-BETS2Y (BETS = Bis(ethylenedithio)tetraselenafulvalene, X = IBr2, I2Br, Y = IBr2, ICl2). The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 2025; 16 (35): 9116 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c02197

Using a 58 superconducting qubit quantum processor, the team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Princeton University, and Google Quantum AI realized a Floquet topologically ordered state, a phase that had been theoretically proposed but never before observed. They directly imaged the characteristic directed motions at the edge and developed a novel interferometric algorithm to probe the system’s underlying topological properties. This allowed them to witness the dynamical “transmutation” of exotic particles – a hallmark that has been theoretically predicted for these exotic quantum states.

Quantum computer as a laboratory

“Highly entangled non-equilibrium phases are notoriously hard to simulate with classical computers,” said the first author Melissa Will, PhD student at the Physics Department of the TUM School of Natural Sciences. “Our results show that quantum processors are not just computational devices – they are powerful experimental platforms for discovering and probing entirely new states of matter.”

This work opens the door to a new era of quantum simulation, where quantum computers become laboratories for studying the vast and largely unexplored landscape of out-of-equilibrium quantum matter. The insights gained from these studies could have far-reaching implications, from understanding fundamental physics to designing next-generation quantum technologies.

Globular clusters are dense collections of hundreds of thousands to millions of stars found orbiting around galaxies, including the Milky Way. Unlike galaxies, they show no evidence of dark matter, and their stars are unusually uniform in age and chemical composition – traits that have left scientists debating their formation since their discovery in the 17th century.

Surrey researchers used ultra-high-resolution simulations that can trace the Universe’s 13.8-billion-year history in unprecedented detail, allowing them to watch globular clusters form in real-time within their virtual cosmos, called EDGE. The simulations find multiple pathways for their creation and, unexpectedly, the emergence of a new class of star system – “globular cluster-like dwarfs” – that sits between globular clusters and dwarf galaxies in terms of their properties.

Dr Ethan Taylor, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Surrey’s School of Mathematics and Physics and lead author of the study, said:

“The formation of globular clusters has been a mystery for hundreds of years, so being able to add additional context surrounding how they form is amazing. We were able to do this in our EDGE simulations without having to add anything special to make them appear, and it just brings the simulations that extra level of realism. Additionally, being able to find a new class of object in the simulations is very exciting, especially since we have already identified a handful of candidates which exist in our very own Milky Way.”

Working in collaboration with Durham University, the University of Bath, the University of Hertfordshire, Carnegie Observatories and the American Museum of Natural History in the USA, Lund University in Sweden and the University of Barcelona in Spain, researchers used the UK’s DiRAC National Supercomputer facility to run the EDGE simulations over several years. To put the scale into perspective, if the largest simulations were run on a standard or high-end laptop, they would take decades to complete. These simulations not only recreated realistic globular clusters and dwarf galaxies but also predicted a previously unknown class of object.

Conventional dwarf galaxies are typically dominated by dark matter, with around a thousand times more of the mysterious substance than stars and gas combined. However, the newly identified ‘globular cluster-like dwarfs’ appear similar to regular star clusters when observed, yet still contain a significant amount of dark matter – meaning telescopes may have already found them in the real universe and classified them as regular globular clusters. This small difference would place them in a unique position to study both dark matter and cluster formation.

Several known Milky Way satellites, such as the “ultra-faint” dwarf galaxy Reticulum II, are likely candidates. If confirmed, they could become prime sites for the search for pristine, metal-free stars born in the early Universe and new locations to test models for the ever-elusive “dark matter.”

Professor Justin Read, Chair of Astrophysics at the University of Surrey, said:

“The EDGE project set out to build the most realistic simulation of the very smallest galaxies in the Universe – one that could follow all 13.8 billion years of its history while still zooming in on the tiny details, like the blast from a single exploding star. It took years to run on the UK’s DiRAC National Supercomputer, but the payoff has been extraordinary. At a resolution of just 10 light years, fine enough to capture the effects of individual supernovae, we’ve been able to show that globular clusters can form in at least two different ways, both without dark matter.”

The next step is to confirm the existence of these globular cluster-like dwarfs through targeted observations with telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope and upcoming deep spectroscopic surveys. If they do, it could give astronomers new ways to test dark matter theories and offer some of the best chances to find the Universe’s very first generation of “metal-free” stars.

After finding high levels of corisin — a small peptide produced by Staphylococcus bacteria in the gut — in the blood of patients with diabetic kidney fibrosis, the researchers used computer simulations and tissue and mouse experiments to track how corisin affects the kidneys, how it gets there from the gut, and a possible method of countering it with antibody treatment.

“Our earlier studies showed corisin can damage cells and worsen tissue scarring and fibrosis in other organs, so we suspected it might be a hidden driver of kidney fibrosis,” said Illinois animal sciences professor Isaac Cann, who led the study with Mie University immunology professor Dr. Esteban Gabazza. Cann and Gabazza are affiliates of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois. “Our new findings suggest corisin is indeed a hidden culprit behind progressive kidney damage in diabetes, and that blocking it could offer a new way to protect kidney health in patients.”

The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

Diabetic kidney fibrosis is a major cause of kidney failure worldwide, yet the key drivers of it have remained a mystery, and no treatments can stop the process, said Dr. Taro Yasuma of Mie University, a medical doctor and the first author of the manuscript.

“Many people with longstanding diabetes eventually develop kidney fibrosis, and once it progresses, there are limited options beyond dialysis or kidney transplantation. Current treatments mainly focus on controlling blood sugar and blood pressure, but there’s no cure that stops or reverses the scarring or fibrotic process,” Yasuma said.

The researchers began by screening the blood and urine of patients with diabetic kidney disease. They found that patients had significantly more corisin than their healthy counterparts, and that the amount of corisin in the blood correlated with the extent of kidney damage.

Upon seeing the same results in mice with kidney fibrosis, the researchers tracked what corisin was doing in the kidneys of the mice. They found that corisin speeds up aging in kidney cells, setting off a chain reaction from inflammation to cell death to a buildup of scar tissue, eventually resulting in the loss of kidney function and worsening fibrosis.

But how was corisin getting from the gut to the kidneys? Cann and Gabazza’s groups collaborated with U. of I. chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Diwakar Shukla’s group to produce computer simulations and laboratory experiments to follow corisin’s journey from the gut to the bloodstream. They found that corisin can attach to albumin, one of the most common proteins in blood, and ride it through the bloodstream. When it reaches the kidneys, corisin detaches from the albumin to attack the delicate structures that filter blood and urine.

To confirm that corisin was the main culprit behind the kidney damage, the researchers gave the mice antibodies against corisin. They saw a dramatic reduction in the speed of kidney damage.

“When we treated the mice with an antibody that neutralizes corisin, it slowed the aging of kidney cells and greatly reduced kidney scarring,” said Gabazza, who also is an adjunct professor of animal sciences at Illinois. “While no such antibody is currently approved for use in humans, our findings suggest it could be developed into a new treatment.”

Next, the researchers plan to test anticorisin treatments in more advanced animal models, such as pigs, to explore how they could be adapted for safe use in humans. The U. of I. and Mie University have a joint invention disclosure on corisin antibodies.

“Our work suggests that blocking corisin, either with antibodies or other targeted therapies, could slow down or prevent kidney scarring in diabetes and thus enhance the quality of life for patients,” Cann said.

This study was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Takeda Science Foundation, the

Japan Association for Diabetes Education and Care, the Eli Lilly Japan Innovation Research Grant, the Daiwa Security Foundation and the Charles and Margaret Levin Family Foundation. Cann is also a professor of microbiology and nutritional sciences and a member of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at Illinois.

Developing such technologies will require the ability to freely generate a multi-photon quantum entangled state, and then to efficiently identify what kind of entangled state is present. However, when performing conventional quantum tomography, a method commonly used for state estimation, the number of measurements required grows exponentially with the number of photons, posing a significant data collection problem.

If available, an entangled measurement can identify the entangled state with a one-shot approach. Such a measurement for the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger — GHZ — entangled quantum state has been realized, but for the W state, the other representative entangled multi-photon state, it has been neither proposed nor discovered experimentally.

This motivated a team of researchers at Kyoto University and Hiroshima University to take on this challenge, ultimately succeeding in developing a new method of entangled measurement to identify the W state.

“More than 25 years after the initial proposal concerning the entangled measurement for GHZ states, we have finally obtained the entangled measurement for the W state as well, with genuine experimental demonstration for 3-photon W states,” says corresponding author Shigeki Takeuchi.

The team focused on the characteristics of the W state’s cyclic shift symmetry, and theoretically proposed a method to create an entangled measurement using a photonic quantum circuit that performs quantum Fourier transformation for the W state of any number of photons.

They created a device to demonstrate the proposed method for three photons using high-stability optical quantum circuits, which allowed the device to operate stably without active control for an extended period of time. By inserting three single photons into the device in appropriate polarization states, the team was able to demonstrate that the device can distinguish different types of three-photon W states, each corresponding to a specific non-classical correlation between the three input photons. The researchers were able to evaluate the fidelity of the entangled measurement, which is equal to the probability of obtaining the correct result for a pure W-state input.

This achievement opens the door for quantum teleportation, or the transfer of quantum information. It could also lead to new quantum communication protocols, the transfer of multi-photon quantum entangled states, and new methods for measurement-based quantum computing.

“In order to accelerate the research and development of quantum technologies, it is crucial to deepen our understanding of basic concepts to come up with innovative ideas,” says Takeuchi.

In the future, the team aims to apply their method to a larger-scale, more general multi-photon quantum entangled state, and plans to develop on-chip photonic quantum circuits for entangled measurements.