Physicist's two-decade theory finally confirmed using superconducting quantum imaging

Dirk Morr, a theoretical physicist at the University of Illinois Chicago, envisioned that superconducting materials could focus quantum waves to produce high-resolution images, a notion he put forward twenty years earlier. At the time, the necessary atom-precise corral could not be fabricated on a superconductor because the surface quality was insufficient. In 2023, a team at the University of Hamburg succeeded in constructing a rectangular atomic corral on a niobium superconductor and placed an iron atom inside, generating a quantum-projected image.

Chang Xu, a graduate student in Morr's group, developed a multilayer theoretical model that reproduced the experimental arrangement and matched the observed image. The findings, published in Nature Physics, confirm Morr's long-standing prediction and demonstrate how cross-border scientific cooperation can turn theoretical ideas into observable phenomena.