Quantum technology, the field that promises to turn your laptop into a brain the size of a planet, is inching out of the lab and toward industries that might actually use it. A new study, led by Cal Poly Physics Lecturer Ian Powell and student researcher Louis Buchalter (B.S. in physics, 2025), has discovered that if you wiggle a magnetic field just right, you can create exotic quantum states with no static counterpart. The work, published in Physical Review B under the title “Flux-Switching Floquet Engineering,” suggests that matter’s weirdness can be dialed up by changing its environment over time.
“Useful quantum properties can depend not just on what a material is, but on how it is driven in time,” Powell said, presumably while adjusting a knob labeled “Reality.” By periodically flipping magnetic fields, the team generated driven quantum phases that don’t exist in static materials. These states are more stable and less prone to the “noise” that makes quantum computers act like a toddler with a calculator. The implications? Better quantum computing and simulation, though Powell admits that curing cancer or optimizing your 401(k) is still a few experimental validations away.
The research also uncovered a mathematical pattern that mirrors higher-dimensional systems, meaning simple setups could simulate complex quantum physics without building a multiverse. The team mapped a topological phase diagram - basically a cheat sheet for where stable quantum states live. For Buchalter, now heading to the University of Washington for a master’s in materials science, the project taught him that “research is rarely a straightforward process.” Translation: it involves a lot of staring at graphs and muttering. He hopes to continue developing quantum devices at a national lab, presumably one with better coffee.