Physicists find electronic agents that govern flat band quantum materials

The new Rice University and Weizmann Institute result is interesting for quantum materials research precisely because it is less glamorous than the writeups make it sound. The underlying Nature Physics paper, “Origin of strange metallicity in a d-orbital kagome metal,” does not report a qubit, a new superconducting device, or even a direct materials recipe for quantum computing hardware. What it does report is more foundational: evidence that a peculiar real-space electronic object called a compact molecular orbital helps govern the strange-metal behavior of the kagome metal Ni3In.

That matters because it sharpens a long-running argument in strongly correlated materials physics. In the new study, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science used sub-unit-cell scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy on thin films of Ni3In to map an unusually structured electronic signal near the Fermi level, then paired those measurements with modeling to argue that the signal matches the spatial profile expected from compact molecular orbitals, or CMOs, in a flat-band kagome system, according to Nature Physics. The paper also reports a zero-bias peak-dip structure and field- and temperature-dependent behavior that the authors compare with heavy-fermion quantum critical systems.

The “electronic agents” language in Rice’s university announcement is a bit theatrical, but the underlying claim is clear enough. In certain lattices, destructive interference can effectively pin some electronic states into nearly flat bands, where interactions loom larger because the electrons have less kinetic freedom. The authors argue that CMOs provide the right localized basis for describing those flat-band states without breaking the system’s symmetries. In plain English: they think they have found the right microscopic bookkeeping system for a class of messy, strongly interacting materials.

That is also where the story diverges from the wire framing. Sonny’s note was right to ask whether this was a Nature paper or something else, because the science is spread across multiple papers and the distinction matters. Si’s earlier Science Advances paper was not this experiment and it was not a materials-specific demonstration in Ni3In. That 2023 theory paper developed a broader framework for “coupled topological flat and wide bands,” including an orbital-selective Mott transition and an effective Kondo-lattice description for how quasiparticles can form and then break down in flat-band systems. It is a conceptual scaffold for strange metallicity, not visual proof that CMOs were governing a real kagome metal.

The more direct bridge to the new experiment is a later 2025 arXiv preprint from Si and collaborators that applied the CMO idea specifically to Ni3In. That preprint argued that Ni3In’s crowded band structure could still be reduced to an effective Anderson-lattice picture built around compact molecular orbitals, and that doing so could explain the scanning-tunneling data and suggest a richer strange-metal phase diagram. In other words, the experimental and theoretical pieces were already converging before this Nature Physics publication. The new paper gives that line of work a peer-reviewed flagship result.

The bigger caveat is the quantum-computing angle. Rice says the work “opens the door for new quantum applications,” and there is a respectable version of that claim. Better microscopic understanding of flat-band, topological, and strongly correlated materials can eventually help researchers identify or engineer systems with more controllable electronic phases. Since qubit platforms ultimately live or die on materials behavior—defects, decoherence, disorder, unexpected collective states—any improved framework for designing quantum materials is potentially useful.

But “potentially useful” is doing real work there. Ni3In is being studied here as a strange metal with possible relevance to high-temperature superconductivity and quantum criticality, not as a qubit material. The Nature Physics study is about identifying the microscopic origin of unusual metallic behavior in a kagome compound. The Science Advances theory is about a general mechanism for correlation physics in coupled flat and wide bands. Neither paper shows a direct route from CMOs to a better superconducting qubit, a better spin qubit, or a manufacturable materials stack for quantum processors.

Still, there is a real “so what” for builders and investors watching the quantum stack. One of the recurring problems in quantum hardware is that the field likes to talk as if device performance descends cleanly from circuit design, when in practice it is often hostage to badly understood materials physics. Work like this does not solve that problem, but it does add something more valuable than a slogan: a candidate microscopic framework that can be tested across other kagome and flat-band systems. If CMOs really are the right degrees of freedom in a broader class of correlated materials, that could eventually matter for how researchers screen compounds, interpret spectroscopy, and decide which weird materials are merely publishable and which are actually engineerable.

For now, the honest read is narrower and more credible. This is a notable condensed-matter result about strange metallicity in a kagome metal, backed by spatially resolved measurements and tied to a theory program Si’s group has been building for several years. It is not a quantum computing breakthrough in disguise. The next thing to watch is whether the same CMO-based picture holds up in other flat-band materials, and whether it predicts properties experimentalists can measure before the press offices start drafting the qubit headlines.