Breakthroughs of the Year: 2022

A key focus of condensed matter physics is the study of new states of matter. States that are immune to noise or imperfections are even more sought-after for their stability. Asst Prof Lee Ching Hua discovered a new type of robust state of matter only existing in driven non-equilibrium media, and which results from a totally new mechanism beyond topology. Interestingly, such states, known as ‘exceptional bound states’, also exhibit curious quantum information properties, possessing a negative amount of quantum entanglement. This work was published in Physical Review Letters 128, 010402 (2022).