FRANK WILCZEK

Quantum Connections 2026 (the sixteenth Quantum Connections in Sweden summer school) brought together graduate students and postdocs, both theoretical and experimental, to work across the quantum frontier alongside leading researchers. The school took place from 7 to 20 June 2026 at Högberga Gård in Lidingö, Sweden. The lecture slides and materials are now available below. About the school Quantum Connections is a series of summer schools for graduate students and postdocs in

Frank Wilczek and collaborators report the first experimental evidence that vacuum fluctuations can enhance superconductivity. The team observed an increase in critical temperature when the layered superconductor NbSe2 was embedded in a split-ring cavity resonator, with the critical current and critical field also rising sharply near the transition. The work, published in Nature, offers a noninvasive way to control superconductivity using engineered vacuum fields rather than

The Wilczek Quantum Center will host a symposium, "Historical and Future Perspectives of Physics and Physicists," on August 17 and 18, 2026. The event will be livestreamed and preserved online. About the symposium The history of physics has repeatedly shown that a deep appreciation of the past and a forward-looking vision are often important at critical moments of major breakthroughs. Today, physics faces profound challenges, among which artificial intelligence brings both tr

Futures, by Nobel and Templeton laureate Frank Wilczek, is an expansive project spanning a public lecture series and writings, exploring what science reveals about reality and how human imagination can shape tomorrow. It centers on a "threefold way" framework: what is (science), what could be (possibilities), and what should be (purpose). About the series Produced by Arizona State University's Department of Physics, this six-part public lecture series brings the ideas of the

A four-part lecture series delivered by Frank Wilczek as part of the Cosmology Seminar Series at Arizona State University in Spring 2026. The series traces the axion from the theoretical gap that motivated it, through its role in cosmology, to the experimental efforts now searching for it. Lecture 1: T Symmetry and the θ Parameter Date February 27, 2026 Speaker Frank Wilczek, MIT Faculty Host Alex Rojewski Abstract A crisis and an opportunity. The standard model has an ex

Invisible Palettes was a collaborative art and science exhibition held at Arizona State University's Harry Wood Gallery from 2 to 19 February 2026. The exhibition brought together a series of paintings by artist Penny Cagney, created in collaboration with Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, Professor Nathan Newman, and the ASU SciHub team. Where art meets physics The paintings were inspired by and developed alongside the Hylighter, a device built by the ASU SciHub team that uses te

Many of Frank’s research efforts pursue opportunistic “one-off” ideas, but there are several enduring themes that continue to inspire him: Axions are hypothetical particles whose existence would explain an otherwise bizarre “coincidence” in our core theories (standard model) of fundamental physics. Frank named axions, and believes in them. Axions are well suited to providing the mysterious cosmological dark matter. The game is afoot. More on Axions. Anyons are a new, d