Water and quantum magnets share critical physics
Water can freeze from liquid to solid ice or boil into a gas. In the kitchen these “phase transitions” aren’t smooth, but their discontinuous nature is smoothed out at high pressure. An international team of physicists – led by EPFL and in collaboration with the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI – have now discovered the same behavior in certain quantum magnets, which may have consequences for the technology of qubits.
