Behind the Cover: August 2023

Each month, Physics Today editors explore the research and design choices that inspired the latest cover of the magazine.

Classical computing demands pristine semiconductor devices. Yet atom-scale irregularities in a crystal—such as the nitrogen–vacancy centers in diamond and defects in silicon carbide —are being studied for use as solid-state quantum bits, or qubits.

In Physics Today‘s August issue, Christopher Anderson and David Awschalom describe how qubits in the form of solid-state defects can be harnessed to process, store, and distribute information. The feature article is one part of the magazine’s special focus this month on quantum technologies. (For more on how to correct for noisy quasiparticles that don’t participate in superconducting qubits, see the article by José Aumentado, Gianluigi Catelani, and Kyle Serniak.)

The graphic design company Second Bay Studios assisted Anderson and Awschalom in drafting some of the article’s illustrations. “Is there a way to show a human element in quantum imagery?” says the company’s cofounder, Peter Allen, about the main topic of discussion. “Unseen quantum technology will benefit people, and people are working and collaborating on making it happen.” Allen made several images, including the one selected for the August cover. “Obviously, almost all of the quantum world is unseen,” Allen says. “Describing entanglement, spintronics, etc., and what they look like is somewhat up for interpretation.”

Freddie Pagani, the magazine’s art director, says she was drawn to the image. “I really liked the high contrast of the light against the hand’s skin,” she says. “It kind of reminds me of chiaroscuro .” She experimented a little more than usual with the image and ended up using red as a focus color to connect the qubit’s spin state (red arrow) with the hand and text. “I also had fun adding depth to the image by layering the top of the yellow arrow over the Physics Today logo.”