Tracing Quantum’s First Steps: Physicists Return to Helgoland

Matin Durrani

More than 300 top quantum physicists gathered on Helgoland in June for a conference that was billed as a highlight of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Matin Durrani reveals what the meeting achieved.

Robert P Crease

One of the most significant events in the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology is a workshop being held in June 2025 in Helgoland – the island where Werner Heisenberg laid the foundations for quantum mechanics 100 years ago. Robert P Crease asks delegates what they’ll be discussing and wonders whether Heisenberg’s work was as definitive as we like to think.

Paul Thomas

Quantum scarring, or many-body scarring, first captured the attention of physicists in 1984. The evocative name was coined by physicist Eric Heller in 1984, based on his interpretation of scientific data visualisation. This phenomenon carries a strange ephemerality—a conundrum that reveals a poetic jitterbug dance of atoms. Interest in quantum scarring has resurfaced again today. In a recent experiment, researchers took 51 atoms at different energy states and held them in place with a laser beam. When released, the 51 atoms began to thermalise, entering a chaotic state, but then—unexpectedly—retraced their chaotic steps, repeatedly returning to their original order. This hesitation or stuttering lasts only for a femtosecond before they resume their chaotic journey. Like most quantum phenomena, the repetition is inexplicable: we can observe the effects, but the cause remains elusive.

Salvatore Capozzıello, Wladimir-Georges Boskoff