Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s BlueFill Lab and Iowa State University have discovered a “quantum echo”—the Higgs echo—in superconducting niobium using advanced terahertz spectroscopy.

This rare phenomenon, caused by interactions between Higgs modes and quasiparticles, offers new ways to observe and control quantum coherence.

The findings open doors to potential breakthroughs in quantum computing and sensing by enabling encoding, storing, and retrieving quantum information in superconductors. The study is detailed in Science Advances by Jigang Wang and colleagues.