News

Researchers used quantum simulations to obtain new insights into the nature of neutrinos — the mysterious subatomic particles that abound throughout the universe — and their role in the deaths of massive stars.

Close on the heels of its fourth summer school, the Quantum Science Center, or QSC, hosted its second in-person all-hands meeting in early May. More than 150 scientists, engineers and support staff traveled from 17 institutions to review the QSC’s progress, examine existing priorities and brainstorm new short- and long-term research endeavors. 

Purdue University hosted more than 100 attendees at the fourth annual Quantum Science Center summer school. Students and early-career members of the QSC —headquartered at ORNL — participated in lectures, hands-on workshops, poster sessions and panel discussions alongside colleagues from other DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Centers. 

A team of researchers including a member of the Quantum Science Center at ORNL has published a review paper on the state of the field of Majorana research. The paper primarily describes four major platforms that are capable of hosting these particles, as well as the progress made over the past decade in this area.

When scientists pushed the world’s fastest supercomputer to its limits, they found those limits stretched beyond even their biggest expectations. In the latest milestone, a team of engineers and scientists used Frontier to simulate a system of nearly half a trillion atoms — the largest system ever modeled and more than 400 times the size of the closest competition.

ORNL researchers have teamed up with other national labs to develop a free platform called Open Energy Data Initiative Solar Systems Integration Data and Modeling to better analyze the behavior of electric grids incorporating many solar projects. 

ORNL scientists are working on a project to engineer and develop a cryogenic ion trap apparatus to simulate quantum spin liquids, a key research area in materials science and neutron scattering studies.

Computational scientists at ORNL have published a study that questions a long-accepted factor in simulating the molecular dynamics of water: the 2 femtosecond time step. According to the team’s findings, using anything greater than a 0.5 femtosecond time step can introduce errors in both the dynamics and thermodynamics when simulating water using a rigid-body description.

Simulations performed on the Summit supercomputer at ORNL are cutting through that time and expense by helping researchers digitally customize the ideal alloy. 

ORNL researchers modeled how hurricane cloud cover would affect solar energy generation as a storm followed 10 possible trajectories over the Caribbean and Southern U.S.