May 2018

Researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Marburg and the University of Regensburg used circularly polarized infrared laser pulses to move electrons between valleys in a 2D material made of Tungsten and Selenium in a honeycomb lattice (similar to graphene).

These laser pulses are extremely short - just a few femtoseconds long, which results in extremely fast data switching. The researchers say that such "lightwave" computing could be millions of times faster than current computers, and be used to develop quantum computing architectures.