LSU physicists create first room-temperature quantum material

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LSU physicists create first room-temperature quantum material

July 14, 2026

A new Nature study establishes a blueprint for engineering future quantum materials<br>that operate under everyday conditions.

– Credit: LSU Quantum Photonics Group.

Quantum materials could transform technologies ranging from powerful computers and<br>ultra-secure communications to advanced energy systems. But there has always been<br>one major obstacle.

Nearly all known quantum materials only exhibit their remarkable properties when cooled<br>to temperatures close to absolute zero. At room temperature, heat creates constant<br>atomic vibrations that overwhelm the delicate quantum behavior scientists are trying<br>to harness. Keeping those vibrations in check requires bulky cryogenic refrigeration<br>systems, making quantum materials powerful tools in the laboratory but difficult to<br>translate into practical technologies.

In a study published in Nature, LSU physicists have developed the first room-temperature quantum material capable<br>of distinguishing and transporting different quantum states of light, overcoming one<br>of the biggest challenges in quantum materials research. Led by Associate Professor<br>of Physics Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, the work establishes a general design principle<br>for engineering an entirely new class of quantum materials, opening new possibilities<br>for quantum computing, secure communications, sensing technologies, and advanced energy<br>systems.

For Chenglong You, a former postdoctoral researcher who is now a professor at the<br>University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, one of the most rewarding<br>moments came when the team's unconventional approach worked exactly as theory predicted.

“One of the most exciting parts of this project was realizing that we could build<br>a material that does something nature doesn’t provide on its own. Seeing it work exactly<br>as we predicted was incredibly rewarding,” said You.

Building a quantum material from the ground up

Rather than searching for a naturally occurring material with the right quantum properties,<br>the team designed and built one.

To create it, the researchers deposited a thin film of gold onto a glass chip. Using<br>focused ion beams, they carved hundreds of microscopic slits into the gold, each acting<br>like an artificial atom, or meta-atom. Together, these meta-atoms form a crystal with<br>no natural counterpart, yet thinner than the width of a human hair.

Using this laser-based optical setup, the team tested its quantum plasmonic metacrystal<br>entirely at room temperature, overcoming one of the biggest barriers in quantum materials<br>research: the need for bulky cryogenic refrigeration to preserve quantum behavior.

– Credit: Olivia Crowell.

As light enters the chip, it travels across the gold surface and interacts with these<br>meta-atoms. By carefully controlling their size, shape, and spacing, the team engineered<br>the material to manipulate light in ways never achieved at room temperature.

“By engineering the distribution of meta-atoms in the plasmonic metacrystal, we can<br>systematically dictate which quantum statistics are allowed to pass through the structure.<br>So, our crystal essentially acts as a statistical filter on quantum states,” said<br>Riley B. Dawkins, who recently completed his Ph.D. and is now joining the National<br>Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an NRC Postdoctoral Research Associate.

From the original idea to the final experiment, every stage of the project — from<br>theory and material design to nanofabrication and experimental validation — was carried<br>out within Magaña-Loaiza's Quantum Photonics Group at LSU.

But the breakthrough extends far beyond creating a new material. It's what that material<br>makes possible.

Telling quantum states apart

Not all light behaves the same way.

Sunlight, laser light, and fluorescent light all contain photons, but those photons<br>fluctuate and interact differently. Those subtle differences determine how light behaves<br>at the quantum level, yet identifying them has traditionally required sophisticated<br>instruments, cryogenic detectors, and millions of measurements.

The team’s metacrystal does it automatically. Instead of responding only to a light<br>wave's color or intensity, it distinguishes subtle quantum differences between incoming<br>light and guides each quantum state along a different pathway through the crystal.

Just as importantly, those pathways allow certain quantum states to propagate through<br>the material with fewer changes to their statistics — the unique characteristics that<br>define each quantum state.

"We call this robust transport," Magaña-Loaiza said. "These quantum states carry information.<br>Our crystal can distinguish them and move them from one point to another in a robust<br>way without requiring cryogenic cooling. That's what opens the door to practical quantum<br>technologies."

Physicists describe this collective behavior as...