Quantum materials could transform technologies ranging from powerful computers and highly secure communications to advanced energy systems, but one major obstacle has long stood in the way.
Most quantum materials reveal their unusual properties only when chilled to temperatures near absolute zero. At room temperature, continual atomic vibrations caused by heat can overpower the fragile quantum effects researchers want to control. Suppressing that motion requires large cryogenic cooling systems, limiting many promising materials to laboratory experiments rather than practical devices.
LSU physicists have created the first room-temperature quantum material that can distinguish among different quantum states of light and transport them through separate pathways. Reported in Nature, the work led by Associate Professor of Physics Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza also introduces a general strategy for designing new quantum materials, with possible applications in computing, secure communication, sensing, and advanced energy technologies.
Researchers build what nature lacks
For Chenglong You, a former postdoctoral researcher who is now a professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, the project reached a turning point when an unconventional design performed exactly as the theory had predicted.
“One of the most exciting parts of this project was realizing that we could build a material that does something nature doesn’t provide on its own. Seeing it work exactly as we predicted was incredibly rewarding,” said You.
Instead of continuing to search for a natural material with the desired behavior, the researchers constructed one from the ground up.
They began by coating a glass chip with a thin layer of gold. Focused ion beams were then used to cut hundreds of microscopic openings into the metal. Each slit functions as an artificial atom, or meta-atom. Arranged together, these structures create a crystal unlike anything found in nature, while remaining thinner than a human hair.
When light enters the chip, it moves along the gold surface and encounters the meta-atoms. Adjusting the size, geometry, and spacing of those structures allowed the researchers to control the light in ways that had not previously been demonstrated at room temperature.
“By engineering the distribution of meta-atoms in the plasmonic metacrystal, we can systematically dictate which quantum statistics are allowed to pass through the structure. So, our crystal essentially acts as a statistical filter on quantum states,” said Riley B. Dawkins, who recently completed his Ph.D. and is now joining the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an NRC Postdoctoral Research Associate.
Magaña-Loaiza’s Quantum Photonics Group at LSU handled every part of the effort, including the original concept, theoretical work, material design, nanofabrication, and experimental testing.
Metacrystal sorts quantum states automatically
The significance of the work lies not only in the material itself, but also in what it can do.
Different sources of light do not behave identically.
Sunlight, lasers, and fluorescent lamps all produce photons, but the particles vary in how they fluctuate and interact. Those small statistical differences shape their quantum behavior. Until now, identifying them has generally required complex equipment, detectors cooled to extremely low temperatures, and millions of individual measurements.
The new metacrystal performs that sorting on its own. Rather than responding only to familiar properties such as wavelength or brightness, it recognizes subtler quantum distinctions in incoming light and sends different states through separate routes within the material.
Certain states can also travel along those routes while retaining more of their defining statistics.
“We call this robust transport,” Magaña-Loaiza said. “These quantum states carry information. Our crystal can distinguish them and move them from one point to another in a robust way without requiring cryogenic cooling. That’s what opens the door to practical quantum technologies.”
This shared quantum behavior is known as quantum coherence. Maintaining it is one of the most difficult problems in quantum information science. In the Nature study, the researchers describe the metacrystal as the first room-temperature quantum material inherently sensitive to the quantum coherence of systems containing many interacting particles.
Because the structure differs so fundamentally from existing materials, the researchers introduced a new term for it: the quantum statistical plasmonic metacrystal.
“For me, this wasn’t just a project — it was a collective effort built around the idea of creating something completely new in quantum technology,” said Jannatul Ferdous, a graduate student in Magaña-Loaiza’s group. “What made it truly exciting was that we were not only creating a new class of room-temperature quantum material but also developing the theory to understand and control its behavior. Seeing this idea become an experimental reality was incredibly rewarding.”
Quantum bands become programmable
The researchers also found that the metacrystal produces what they call quantum statistical bands. These resemble the electronic bands that govern how electricity moves through semiconductor materials.
Changing the arrangement of the meta-atoms lets researchers control which quantum states can pass through without being altered and which emerge with different statistics. That means future materials may be deliberately designed to route specific quantum states instead of relying on the limited properties available in natural substances.
The findings therefore offer a broader design framework for building additional quantum materials, rather than describing only one successful device.
Room temperature operation broadens applications
Operating without extreme cooling could make the concept relevant well beyond basic physics research.
Related materials might eventually move fragile quantum information inside quantum computers without the large refrigeration systems commonly required today. The same approach could support more practical quantum communication networks, highly sensitive detectors, and other developing quantum technologies.
More efficient control of light could also have implications for renewable energy.
Some sunlight entering a modern solar cell becomes trapped and ultimately turns into heat instead of electricity. That loss limits how much usable energy the device can produce. A metacrystal capable of guiding light along more stable pathways might keep a larger share of that energy moving through the cell rather than allowing it to dissipate.
Magaña-Loaiza plans to investigate that possibility next.
The researchers intend to place the metacrystal inside solar cells and test whether it increases the fraction of incoming sunlight converted into electricity. A successful result would show how a material developed through fundamental quantum physics might contribute directly to future solar energy technologies.
Reference: “Quantum statistical plasmonic metacrystals” by Chenglong You, Riley B. Dawkins, Jannatul Ferdous, Mohammed Mehedi Hasan, Aadi Singh, Ziang Zhuang, Addison Wilberg, Ian Baum, Benjamin Bertoni, Mingyuan Hong and Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, 15 July 2026, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10782-3
The team acknowledges funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, under Award DE-SC0021069.
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