Caltech's new work removes one of the main bottlenecks that has held back photonic chips, especially those that rely on visible light

In collaboration with the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN), Oshima College, the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) succeeded in developing a new regenerator material composed solely of abundant elements, such as copper, iron, and aluminum, that can achieve cryogenic temperatures (approx. 4 K = −269°C or below) without using any rare-earth metals or liquid helium. By utilizing a special property called "frustration" found in some magnetic materials, where the spins cannot simultaneously satisfy each other's orientations in a triangular lattice, the team demonstrated a novel method that replaces the conventional rare-earth-dependent cryogenic cooling technology. The developed material holds promise for responding to the lack of liquid helium as well as for application to stable cooling in medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and quantum computers, which is expected to see further growth in demand. This research result was published in UK scientific journal, Scientific Reports, on December 22, 2025.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is proud to congratulate Prof. Benjamin Weiss of the Einstein Institute for Mathematics on being awarded the Israel Prize in the field of mathematics, computer science, and computer engineering research.

A team of researchers of the University of Stuttgart and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg led by Prof. Stefanie Barz (University of Stuttgart) has demonstrated a source of single photons that combines on-demand operation with record-high photon quality in the telecommunications C-band—a key step toward scalable photonic quantum computation and quantum communication. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68336-0