Energy Department announces 2026 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award winners

Fermilab editor’s note: The following press release was posted by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Charles “Chris” Polly has been a central figure in Muon g-2 experiments for almost three decades. His leadership and contributions were key to achieving the most precise measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon in particle physics to date, with the latest result published in 2025.

He was a lead graduate student on the Muon g-2 experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Brookhaven result, completed in the early 2000s, revealed a tantalizing discrepancy between experiment and theoretical predictions, making it one of the most closely watched measurements in particle physics and motivating decades of further research.

Polly was instrumental in the move of the 50-foot muon storage ring from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York to Fermilab in Illinois. He helped lead the next generation of the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab as the Project Manager who led the design and construction of the experiment from start to finish, and later served as co-spokesperson when the collaboration announced its first result in 2021.

---

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright today announced nine recipients of the prestigious Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for their exceptional contributions to research and development supporting the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) missions in science, energy, and national security.

“This year’s Lawrence Award recipients exemplify the ingenuity and determination that drive America’s leadership in science and technology,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “From achieving fusion ignition to advancing critical materials and high-performance computing, these scientists and engineers are tackling some of our nation’s most complex challenges and translating groundbreaking research into real-world capabilities. Their work strengthens our nation’s energy security, drives American innovation, and ensures the United States remains at the forefront of scientific discovery.”

Established in 1959, the Lawrence Award recognizes mid-career U.S. scientists and engineers for groundbreaking achievements across nine scientific and engineering categories. The award is among the longest-running and most prestigious science and technology honors bestowed by the U.S. government.

The 2026 Ernest O. Lawrence Award recipients are:

Charles “Chris” Polly, Ph.D. (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) – High Energy Physics – Honored for his “exceptional scientific and technical contributions to low-energy precision measurements in particle physics, most notably leadership of the experimental measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon with the Muon g-2 experiment.” 

Eric J. Schelter, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania) – Atomic, Molecular, and Chemical Sciences – Honored for his “fundamental chemical studies of energy-critical metals leading to new methods for their selective and sustainable separations.” 

Patrick Chain, Ph.D. (Los Alamos National Laboratory and New Mexico Consortium) – Biological and Environmental Sciences – Honored for his “pioneering work in genomics and microbiome science, including discoveries of new bacterial-fungal interactions and revolutionizing the field by democratizing access to advanced bioinformatics tools.” 

Samuel W. Williams, Ph.D. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) – Computer, Information, and Knowledge Sciences – Honored for his “pioneering contributions in performance modeling, hardware/software design optimization, and novel computer architecture for high-performance computing, enabling modeling of complex computational solutions, and increasing analysis speed, simulation accuracy, and computational efficiency.” 

Thomas Epps, III, Ph.D. (University of Delaware) – Condensed Matter and Materials Sciences – Honored for his “fundamental contributions to chemistry and materials science with applications in the chemical upcycling of polymeric waste, generation of high-performance materials from biomass feedstocks, and development of membranes for lithium-ion battery technologies.” 

Gregg Beckham, Ph.D. (National Laboratory of the Rockies and University of Colorado Boulder) – Energy Science and Innovation – Honored for his “transformative research in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass and waste plastics via biology, chemistry, and engineering, yielding building blocks for sustainable fuels, chemicals, and materials.” 

Andrea L. Kritcher, Ph.D. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) – Fusion and Plasma Sciences – Honored for her “exceptional design efforts leading to the first-ever achievement of fusion ignition in the Laboratory, which is of major scientific impact to institutional and national missions, the private sector, and fusion interests within academia.” 

Michael Reed, Ph.D. (Nevada National Security Site) – National Security and Nonproliferation – Honored for his “vital contributions to national and international nuclear emergency response through the Advanced Visualization & Integration of Data (AVID) software, which broke existing paradigms by simultaneously fusing all radiological data into a single interface connected seamlessly to world-wide expertise.” 

Lijuan Ruan, Ph.D. (Brookhaven National Laboratory) – Nuclear Physics – Honored for her “outstanding leadership and ingenuity in the design, construction, and operation of novel detector systems in the STAR experiment, transforming dilepton final states into precision probes of heavy ion collisions.”

DOE will honor the recipients at a hybrid award ceremony in Washington, D.C., on November 13, 2026. The ceremony will be broadcast live online, and a recording will be available following the event. Registration is required for both virtual and in-person attendees. Due to space and security requirements, in-person attendance is limited, with registration closing October 30, 2026.

For more information and to RSVP, visit the DOE Office of Science Ernest O. Lawrence Award webpage.

Decades of pioneering work to create powerful superconducting magnets for particle physics research also laid the foundation for technologies that have benefited society, such as MRI machines used for medical imaging. Since building the Tevatron, once the world’s most advanced particle collider, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has developed expertise across advanced superconducting materials, magnet prototypes, diagnostics tools and analysis tools.

Now, Fermilab is launching the MAGNet Environment Simulator, or MAGNES. Jointly funded by the DOE Office of Fusion and the DOE Offices of High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics, it will support research aimed at harnessing nearly limitless fusion energy.

The latest advances in magnet technologies often pull particle physics and fusion research together. Fermilab has spent decades designing and building some of the most powerful superconducting magnets in the world for particle accelerators. Fusion reactors — particularly the tokamak designs at the frontier of research — require similarly powerful magnets to confine the superheated plasma where fusion reactions occur. Fermilab’s combination of magnet engineering expertise, test infrastructure, and scientific depth makes it a natural partner for the global push toward fusion energy.

Testing superconducting cables in an advanced cryogenic facility

According to Greek legend, a shepherd named Magnes first discovered the phenomenon of magnetism when the iron in his staff and sandals became attracted to a naturally magnetic rock, later known as lodestone. That ancient observation inspired the concept — and ultimately the word — magnetism. Over the centuries, this simple curiosity evolved into one of the most transformative forces in science and technology, culminating in the 20th-century discovery of superconductivity, which made possible the powerful magnets that underpin modern particle accelerators, fusion devices and medical imaging.

“We chose the name MAGNES to reflect both the history and the future of magnetism,” said Stephen Gourlay, director of the Magnet Technology Division at Fermilab. “For a facility dedicated to advancing extreme-field superconducting magnet technologies for fusion energy and particle accelerators, it provides both an appropriate foundation and an inspiration for the breakthroughs yet to come.”

Certain materials, when cooled to extreme temperatures, lose all electrical resistance and can carry extraordinary currents, making them capable of generating magnetic fields far beyond what conventional electromagnets can achieve. Today, superconducting magnets are essential to both high energy physics and fusion energy research.

In particle accelerators, magnetic fields are used to steer charged particles toward their targets; in fusion research, magnetic fields confine the intensely hot plasma necessary to facilitate and sustain nuclear fusion reactions. Cables made from superconducting materials could carry the strong electrical currents required for magnets inside a future fusion reactor. If researchers can use powerful magnetic fields to reliably control sustained fusion reactions, they could set the stage for a method to generate nearly limitless energy by replicating the same nuclear process that powers the Sun.

The MAGNES test bed at Fermilab will be unique in the United States for its ability to provide access to a volume of high magnetic field that can be used for testing the superconducting cables that would go into such a reactor.

MAGNES will also help us explore the upper limits of operational temperatures for superconductors, since higher temperatures could widen the application of superconducting materials and lower the costs of running cryogenic systems used to cool the materials.”

“MAGNES is designed to simulate the environment that cables would experience inside a magnet,” said Gourlay. “The test magnet provides a strong, stable background magnetic field, and we pass current — up to 100,000 amps — through the superconducting cables to test their performance in realistic conditions. MAGNES will also help us explore the upper limits of operational temperatures for superconductors, since higher temperatures could widen the application of superconducting materials and lower the costs of running cryogenic systems used to cool the materials.”

The controlled environment of MAGNES is also designed with safety in mind. When a superconducting cable is pushed beyond its limits, it undergoes a rapid transition called a “quench” — a sudden loss of superconductivity that releases energy. Understanding and managing this process safely is critical before any cable design can be used in a fusion reactor. This testing capability enables researchers to push cables to their performance limits, setting the stage for deeper analysis of how much current the materials can sustain before losing their superconducting properties.

“By testing the critical current-carrying capacity of these cables, we can determine how much current they can handle before they lose their superconducting properties, which depend on the background magnetic field,” said Yuhu Zhai, principal engineer at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. “With a higher background field, we can use lower power supplies to test these cables.”

At the heart of MAGNES is a powerful magnet designed and fabricated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It features an extra-large bore to accommodate the high-current cables and also facilitate a wide variety of other experiments.

“The 15-tesla dipole magnet made by Berkeley Lab — about 300,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field — will be installed in an 18-foot-deep and nearly 5-foot-diameter pit that can reach temperatures colder than outer space,” said Gueorgui Velev, of Fermilab’s Magnet Technology Division.

To put that field strength in perspective, a typical hospital MRI machine generates between 1.5 and 3 tesla. At 15 tesla, MAGNES can recreate the intense magnetic environment that superconducting cables would experience deep inside a next-generation fusion reactor — conditions that no other U.S. facility can currently replicate for cable testing at this scale.

MAGNES’ cryostat — the system that chills samples to roughly 2 to 4 degrees above absolute zero — was built by a company in Illinois. Senior Fermilab engineer Vlad Nikolic coordinated the cryostat design and construction.

“This unique system required precise machining in critical areas. The cryostat — which cools the magnet — needs an especially precise seal where superfluid helium meets normal liquid helium. That seal must be flat to within two-thousandths of an inch across a 14-foot circumference,” said Nikolic. 

“Now that we’ve carefully installed the cryostat, our next step is to build the anti-cryostat, which enables temperature control of test samples from cryogenic to room temperatures.”

“Now that we’ve carefully installed the cryostat, our next step is to build the anti-cryostat, which enables temperature control of test samples from cryogenic to room temperatures,” Nikolic continued. “The anti-cryostat allows us to change the sample’s temperature without warming up the main magnet that generates the background magnetic field. Without it, warming the magnet would take about a month. With the anti-cryostat, the sample can be changed in just one day.”

This ability to test samples across a spectrum of temperatures allows researchers to map how cable performance changes under different thermal conditions and magnetic fields — critical data for fusion reactor design. As cables warm, their current-carrying capacity falls and the risk of quenching rises. By quantifying exactly where those thresholds lie, researchers can determine whether a given cable material is suitable for a reactor’s operating environment, and whether new high-temperature superconductors might eventually replace more costly, harder-to-cool alternatives.

With construction of MAGNES well underway and the first cable tests expected to begin in the summer of 2028, Fermilab is positioning itself as a key player in the Department of Energy’s push to achieve sustainable and scalable fusion energy. The facility’s research will directly inform the design of magnets for next-generation fusion devices, providing the foundational data that government labs, universities and private fusion companies need to move from prototype to power plant. In doing so, Fermilab’s decades-long legacy of magnet innovation may prove as consequential to the future of energy as it has been to the frontiers of physics.

Daniel Bafia, an associate scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, has received a DOE Early Career Award to investigate the microscopic defects that can limit the performance of superconducting quantum devices. His project aims to harness magnetic vortices – a characteristic feature of certain superconductors and a common source of energy loss – as a tool to probe otherwise hidden defects in superconducting materials.

Superconducting materials are essential to many quantum technologies because they can preserve quantum information with exceptionally low energy loss. But even in high-performing devices, microscopic features within the materials and at their interfaces can contribute to microwave dissipation and impact device performance.

Researchers can measure microwave loss in a superconducting device, but directly determining which defects cause that loss remains difficult. Bafia’s project proposes a unique approach: investigating whether magnetic vortices can be used to probe what he calls the “hidden defect landscape” within superconducting materials.

“I want to identify what is presently limiting the performance of our qubits,” Bafia said. “What I’m doing is developing a new measurement framework to understand where these sources of energy loss are coming from.”

Magnetic vortices can form in type II superconductors, including materials such as niobium and tantalum, when magnetic flux penetrates the material in its superconducting state. Each vortex carries a tiny amount of magnetic flux through the superconductor. At its center, superconductivity is suppressed and the material behaves more like a normal conductor, while superconducting currents circulate around the core.

Those vortices interact with defects in the surrounding material, which can pin them in place. By measuring how trapped vortices contribute to radio-frequency dissipation, Bafia wants to determine whether different defect environments produce distinguishable signatures.

“Rather than treating vortices as another source of unwanted loss, my goal is to explore whether their interactions with defects and interfaces can become a new tool for characterizing superconducting materials.”

“My job is to figure out what the connection is between the defects and the vortices,” said Bafia. “Rather than treating vortices as another source of unwanted loss, my goal is to explore whether their interactions with defects and interfaces can become a new tool for characterizing superconducting materials.”

The work builds on more than a decade of Fermilab research into trapped magnetic flux in niobium superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities for particle accelerators, along with extensive experience in materials and magnetic characterization. Those capabilities provide a foundation for extending techniques developed through accelerator-focused SRF research to investigate materials challenges in superconducting quantum devices.

The project also connects directly to the goals of the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center, one of five DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Centers. If Bafia can establish a relationship between vortex behavior, the underlying defect landscape, and qubit performance, the framework could provide a new way to characterize sources of dissipation that researchers have not been able to isolate directly.

“If we can link vortex pinning to energy loss, it could provide a new way to understand the defects that limit materials for superconducting quantum computers,” Bafia said.

Rakshya Khatiwada, a physicist with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Illinois Institute of Technology, has received the U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award to pursue an innovative approach for discovering dark matter. Her project will test the potential of entangled superconducting qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers, to detect signals far too faint for conventional instruments to catch.

Dark matter makes up roughly five times more of the universe’s matter than the ordinary matter we see in stars, planets and people, yet it has never been directly observed.

“We already see some signatures of dark matter from astrophysical observations like gravitational lensing and cosmic microwave background radiation,” Khatiwada explained. “Searching for dark matter in the laboratory requires a different approach. Scientists need highly specialized instruments to detect the faint signals that dark matter might produce through interactions with ordinary matter and electromagnetic fields.”

Khatiwada’s research will use a four-qubit entangled system to test whether quantum entanglement offers a genuine sensing advantage over independent, non-entangled qubits when exposed to a simulated dark matter signal. Entanglement links the quantum states of two or more qubits, which can work together as a sensitive detector.

“These entangled qubits share a single quantum state,” Khatiwada said. “So, if they all encounter the same dark matter signal, their response is enhanced.”

Before coming to Fermilab, Khatiwada conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Washington with the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment, working with quantum amplifiers as a quantum detector lead. Resonant-cavity experiments like ADMX are sensitive to narrow bands of dark matter mass and require careful tuning to sweep across a broad range of masses over time.

That experience convinced her that quantum sensing is essential for detecting dark matter, and she has been exploring the use of qubits for this purpose ever since. Khatiwada explained that entangled qubits could not only help researchers detect fainter signals but also search more efficiently across a range of possible dark matter masses.

“These entangled qubits share a single quantum state,” Khatiwada said. “So, if they all encounter the same dark matter signal, their response is enhanced.”

Khatiwada credits Fermilab’s highly specialized capabilities and resources, including the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center, and her work as a professor with excellent graduate students at Illinois Institute of Technology with creating the ideal setting for her project.

Her work recently demonstrated very low-noise performance of superconducting qubits in the QUIET and LOUD facilities at Fermilab, where she is also using super intelligence and machine learning to study noise that is extremely hard to detect using traditional methods. These ongoing efforts will lay the groundwork for her entanglement project.

“I am really excited about applying these ideas that I have been working on to entanglement-based sensing for dark matter,” Khatiwada said. “Fermilab has excellent infrastructure, resources and technical expertise, as well as talented postdoctoral researchers. This is a great place to do research.”

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory received two new awards as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, a national effort to double the productivity and overall impact of American science by leveraging super intelligence (SI) and the combined strengths of the agency’s 17 national laboratories. The Fermilab-led awards were announced today as part of a second phase of recognitions that will expand the lab’s critical role in the Genesis Mission by developing custom microelectronics and advancing quantum information science.

“Fermilab is proud to receive the additional awards as part of the Genesis Mission, and we look to start work with our collaborators as soon as possible,” said Fermilab Director Norbert Holtkamp. “Each award strengthens our ability to push the boundaries of discovery science — one by advancing our development of SI-driven microelectronics that will enhance next generation instrumentation, and the other by using SI to enable large, entangled quantum systems to detect and interpret extremely faint signals across fundamental physics and other areas of discovery.”

The first is the Genesis Mission Phase II award “Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon,” known as AXESS, which aims to revolutionize custom microelectronics design by using super intelligence to accelerate development of chips that can function in extreme environments. The project will boost innovation and national competitiveness, with potential impacts in quantum, fusion energy and particle physics.

“Our AXESS researchers are using SI to shorten microelectronics design processes from months to minutes. This will significantly boost national competitiveness and accelerate the pace of innovation.”

“Our AXESS researchers are using SI to shorten microelectronics design processes from months to minutes,” said Anna Grassellino, Fermilab’s chief technology officer. “This will significantly boost national competitiveness and accelerate the pace of innovation. Fermilab has deep experience creating chips that can function in extreme environments, like cryogenic temperatures or intense radiation, that can be used in specialized applications.”

Partners for AXESS include Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Arizona State University, Dataerai, Georgia Institute of Technology, IBM, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University, Sandia National Laboratories, Siemens EDA, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, University of California San Diego, University of Southern California and other industry collaborators.

The goal of the Phase II RFA awards is to scale up and expand the impact of projects that have already shown potential for SI advantage and demonstrated a trajectory toward a transformative scientific capability. The selected projects are multi-year and use interdisciplinary teams to address national science and technology challenges across key DOE mission areas.

The second new Fermilab-led award is a Phase I project titled “AI-Guided Sparse Characterization of Quantum Sensing States and Entanglement Structures,” also known as QCVV.

Quantum sensors exploit uniquely quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to search for extraordinarily weak signals — including signals relevant to fundamental physics. But as quantum systems grow larger and more complex, fully measuring and understanding their quantum states becomes increasingly difficult, requiring enormous amounts of data and experimental time.

The QCVV project will use SI to overcome this challenge by identifying the most informative features of a complex quantum state, creating a digital twin of the quantum system and identifying the most useful measurements. Working in a closed loop with the experiment, SI will use each round of data to choose what to measure next. This approach could enable the characterization of much larger quantum systems and help scientists separate faint signals from noise and experimental imperfections.

“Ultimately, this work could help us build larger, more powerful quantum sensors and accelerate searches for some of the faintest signals in fundamental science.”

Led by Fermilab, the project brings together IBM, NVIDIA, Purdue University, Quantum Machines and University of Chicago. Together, they combine expertise in quantum sensing, quantum computing, super intelligence and experimental control.

“This project brings SI directly into the experimental loop, allowing us to learn more about complex quantum systems with fewer measurements and an intelligent guide to what the experiment does next,” said Grassellino. “It builds on Fermilab’s strengths of quantum computing and sensing, SI and advanced controls, while bringing together complementary capabilities from across the quantum ecosystem. Ultimately, this work could help us build larger, more powerful quantum sensors and accelerate searches for some of the faintest signals in fundamental science.”

In addition, Fermilab is a recipient of two more Phase II awards as a collaborating institution, including “Lattice QCD at the Intelligence Frontier.” Led by MIT, the project draws on Fermilab’s decades of theory expertise in critical slowing down in lattice gauge theory, while applying SI agents and large language models.

The other Phase II award is the “Multi-Office Accelerator Team Core” project, known as MOAT-Core. Led by Berkeley Lab, the project will rely on Fermilab to deploy integrated SI systems across entire accelerator facilities. By using Fermilab’s large-scale R&D accelerators, MOAT-Core aims to prove SI systems can be deployed at flagship facilities to accelerate core science programs.

“Combined, these investments accelerate Fermilab’s momentum at the frontiers of technology and deepen our contributions to a mission designed to transform how the nation approaches scientific discovery, while advancing the laboratory’s commitment to developing innovations that benefit both science and society,” added Holtkamp.

More information about Fermilab research is available at www.fnal.gov.

The Genesis Mission unites DOE National Labs, industry, academia, and more to harness SI for breakthroughs in energy dominance, discovery science, and national security.

Editor’s note: The following press release was issued by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to announce the 2026 Nobel Prize in physics. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory extends its sincerest congratulations to Francis Halzen, recipient of this year’s prize, for his pioneering work in neutrino science. His contributions form part of the foundation on which today’s neutrino research stands. Fermilab is advancing this science through major international neutrino experiments, including the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility. Hosted by Fermilab, DUNE at LBNF brings together more than 200 research institutions worldwide, with construction underway at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois and the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota.

6 October 2026

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2026 to

Francis Halzen
University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA

“for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin”

Elusive particles from the universe captured at the South Pole

Francis Halzen realised that ice at the South Pole could be used to track particles known as neutrinos. His vision and scientific leadership have been fundamental for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory — a cubic kilometre of ice that is equipped with light sensors. Using IceCube, researchers can capture neutrinos from extremely energy-rich processes in the distant universe.

---

Neutrinos are everywhere, but they do not make themselves known. They pass all the way through the Earth and through our bodies without us noticing. Very rarely, a single neutrino will interact with an atomic nucleus, which makes it possible for someone with the right equipment to discover them.

Francis Halzen first presented his vision for capturing neutrinos at the South Pole in 1988. When a neutrino collides with an atomic nucleus, it produces a flash of light that can be tracked by sensors in the clear glacial ice. The South Pole’s ice has many advantages, as it is free from various types of interference and the area is geologically stable, with no earthquakes. Halzen and his idea soon gained the support of other researchers and, just a few years later, preliminary testing was conducted on sensors in ice.

Cosmic neutrinos with extremely high energies are very rare, so an enormous volume of ice is needed to observe an adequate number of collisions. IceCube covers an entire cubic kilometre and was finished in 2011. Researchers soon discovered the first high-energy neutrinos and, a few years later, could publish their discovery of neutrinos that must originate far outside our solar system. The search for the universe’s neutrino sources could begin in earnest.

“Francis Halzen has led an international team of researchers and engineers who have provided us with a fantastic instrument. His tenacity and scientific vision has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy,” says Mark Pearce, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

The neutrino interactions that are continuously collected by IceCube will provide researchers with novel knowledge about the violent settings in which high-energy neutrinos can be created – and could even reveal previously unknown cosmic phenomena.

Leaders from U.S. national laboratories and industry will come together at Fermilab on October 13 to participate in a special public evening focused on the future of fusion energy.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Dr. Kim Budil will present, “Fusion: The Promise, the Progress and the Path Ahead.”  She will then be joined by Fermilab Director Norbert Holtkamp, Argonne National Laboratory Director Paul Kearns, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Associate Director Joe Hoagland, and industry to discuss the role of the national laboratories in advancing fusion energy and how this promising technology can be leveraged for societal benefit.

WHAT: Special Public Evening at Fermilab: Fusion Energy
WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, 5–6:45 p.m. CT
WHERE: Ramsey Auditorium, Wilson Hall, Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois

The event is open to the public, but registration is required. REAL ID-compliant identification is required to access Fermilab.

Registration is required.
Note: REAL ID-compliant identification is required to access Fermilab.

Reserve your seat at: A Special Public Evening at Fermilab

Understanding why some superconducting qubits outperform others remains one of the most important challenges in quantum computing. As long as the quantum state in a qubit maintains its coherence and does not decay, information can be held and potentially processed in advanced calculations far beyond the capabilities of current computers.

“Advancing quantum information science is fundamentally tied to our ability to control matter at the atomic level.”

While over the past decade researchers have identified many possible coherence-limiting defects in the materials used to make the qubits, establishing which microscopic features explain why identically designed qubits may perform differently has remained a challenge. Now, researchers from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory-led Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center, or SQMS, have completed one of the most comprehensive studies ever conducted, linking materials and their structures — including surfaces, interfaces and geometries — to variations in quantum device performance. This research provides new insights that directly connect to device fabrication, an important step on the path toward building practical and reliable quantum computers.

In a large-scale study involving Fermilab, Northwestern University, Rigetti Computing, Ames National Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and National Physical Laboratory, SQMS researchers examined 22 superconducting transmon qubits fabricated by Fermilab, Rigetti and NIST. A transmon is a specific type of superconducting qubit, engineered to be far less sensitive to the small fluctuations in electric charge that can flip a qubit’s state, making it one of the most widely used qubit designs in superconducting quantum computing today. Using seven different materials-characterization techniques, the teams documented the material properties of quantum devices exhibiting varying levels of quantum-state coherence and investigated correlations with device-performance data. The study’s findings have been published in Applied Physics Reviews.

“Advancing quantum information science is fundamentally tied to our ability to control matter at the atomic level,” said Bindu Nair, associate director of Basic Energy Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. “The coordinated effort led by SQMS provides a scientifically grounded guide to the material defects behind variability in superconducting device performance, moving us from observation to correlation. This foundational knowledge is essential to building the next generation of reliable, reproducible and powerful quantum technologies for the nation.”

A study based on correlations

For years, SQMS researchers have investigated how materials, interfaces and surface chemistry affect the coherence of quantum states in superconducting qubits. Pre-dating the center’s work, Fermilab researchers studied cavities that preserve high-coherence states, and used them to understand how niobium oxides influence the performance of quantum devices. Throughout the lifetime of the center, understanding and controlling the oxides with thermal processing has remained a focus. These studies contributed to the development of surface encapsulation approaches designed to protect superconducting surfaces and improve performance.

“The strength of this study is that it brought together many techniques, many devices and many partners.”

Despite these extensive advances, challenges remain in achieving uniformly high qubit performance. Superconducting qubits can be fabricated on the same chip, using the same nominal processes and materials, and still perform differently. For quantum researchers, that variation points to one of the field’s central materials science questions: What, at the microscopic level, causes one qubit to maintain quantum information longer than another?

“This study was based on systematically comparing high-performing versus low-performing devices side-by-side,” said Alexander Romanenko, SQMS technology leader. “Because those devices share the same design and are fabricated together from the same materials, any difference in how they performed had to come down to something more subtle. Over the past two decades, we have successfully developed this methodology to understand and improve the performance of superconducting radio frequency cavities, and with SQMS we decided to apply it for the first time to superconducting qubits.”

To achieve this goal, the team paired a variety of microscopy and spectroscopy techniques across Fermilab, Ames National Laboratory, and Northwestern University with quantum coherence characterization for qubit states performed in the SQMS Quantum Garage at Fermilab.

“No single measurement tells the whole story,” said Akshay Murthy, deputy director of the SQMS Center. “The strength of this study is that it brought together many techniques, many devices and many partners. By combining those data sets, we were able to identify generalizable trends that would be very difficult to see from one device or one characterization method alone.”

By determining which defects correlate with performance variation from one qubit to the next, researchers can target those defects through improved materials processing, fabrication techniques and surface treatments. For SQMS, that makes the study more than a retrospective analysis of device performance. It provides a roadmap for future work.

A bias-free look at qubit materials

The study was designed to remove bias from the process, and researchers who characterized the devices did not know how the qubits had performed. Instead, each team examined the devices, documented the features they observed and quantified those features as thoroughly as possible. Only after the data was collected did researchers look for correlations between materials defects and variations in qubit performance.

“The challenge we gave ourselves was a blind study where we didn’t reveal the energy relaxation lifetimes (T₁) — how quickly an excited quantum state loses energy — of the devices before we started a comprehensive study of the qubits,” said Matt Kramer, distinguished scientist at Ames National Laboratory. “The first tests we did were non-destructive, with many of those methods allowing us to recognize features which we could then look at with higher resolution and employ more invasive methods. This approach allowed an unbiased decision tree to look for features that could be linked to variations in qubit performance.”

The analysis pointed to three features that stood out in relation to variations in device performance: the depth of the trenches around device structures, the angle of the etched sidewalls and the thickness of the oxide layer on the surface.

• Surface oxide-layer thickness reflects the chemistry of the superconducting surface. Prior SQMS work showed this layer, though only a few nanometers thick, dominates losses in niobium qubits. This study adds that even single nanometer variations in oxide thickness from device-to-device can meaningfully shift performance.

• Sidewall angles are tied to how device structures are patterned and etched during fabrication. Electromagnetic simulations indicate that a sharp angle of approximately 10-15 degrees reduces the electric field stored in lossy oxides and predicts improvement in performance by 20 to 30% compared to a broader, more tapered angle of around 30 degrees.

• Trench depth was also found to significantly contribute to variations in qubit performance. This represents the vertical distance of the recesses etched into the underlying substrate — the foundation of the qubit — immediately adjacent to the edges of the superconducting metal electrodes. At trench depths below approximately 20 nanometers, small variations have a more dramatic effect on device performance. At a larger trench depth, this effect saturates and other factors play a more prominent role. Like sidewall angles, trench depths are also tied to fabrication.

In contrast, the team also examined macroscopic defects, such as surface scratches, particulates and similar visible imperfections, but found no clear correlation between these features and device performance, suggesting that for this set of devices, nanoscale differences in surface chemistry and etch geometry matter more to performance variation than damage visible to the eye.

Collectively, the findings indicate that both fabrication geometry and surface chemistry help explain the reproducibility of device performance. Across the devices studied, differences in these three features accounted for as much as a twofold variation in performance among qubits fabricated from identical materials. This evidence therefore points to tighter control over trench depth, sidewall angle and oxide thickness as a way to narrow that spread.

Guidance for quantum manufacturing

For industry partners, the findings offer something that has been difficult to obtain: scientifically grounded guidance on which materials and fabrication features deserve the most attention.

Companies such as Rigetti Computing can fabricate devices repeatedly and at scale, but they often lack the breadth of knowledge and tools to investigate every possible cause of performance variation in depth. That makes the SQMS collaboration especially valuable.

“As we scale to larger quantum processors, performance isn’t set by our best qubits — it’s set by our worst ones, since a single low-performance qubit can drag down the fidelity of any computation that relies on it,” Andrew Bestwick, chief technology officer at Rigetti, said. “Narrowing that spread across a chip matters just as much as pushing our best qubits further, and that’s exactly the kind of problem this study starts to give us a scientific handle on.”

“The SQMS study gives companies a stronger basis for determining which changes are worth pursuing.”

For Rigetti, the study addresses questions that are directly connected to device fabrication. “We have wondered ourselves: What sidewall angle should we engineer our etch to have? How deep should the trench go? How much should we prioritize these lithographic features?” Bestwick said. “Very few people have been able to establish answers to these questions scientifically.”

That information could help guide future manufacturing decisions.

“In industry, process changes must be made carefully and in a controlled way to keep fabrication stable and reproducible,” Bestwick said. “The SQMS study gives companies a stronger basis for determining which changes are worth pursuing.”

A roadmap towards reproducible qubits

The work represents an important milestone in SQMS’s broader mission to establish the scientific foundations of scalable quantum computing. While the study identifies several materials and fabrication features strongly associated with qubit performance, researchers view these results as the beginning rather than the end of the journey. In this initial study, the team established which material features help explain energy relaxation. The team’s next step is to extend the analysis to dephasing and T₂ coherence, which refers to how long a qubit can maintain phase information, a critical parameter for gate fidelity in multi-qubit processors.

As superconducting quantum processors continue to include more qubits and more complex connections, the ability to engineer coherence through a deep understanding of materials is increasingly essential. The SQMS collaboration is helping build that foundation, and with it, a new standard for how quantum hardware is developed and understood.

And the work continues.