Physicists extend magnon lifetimes to 18 microseconds

An international team led by Andrii Chumak of the University of Vienna extended magnon lifetimes from a few hundred nanoseconds to as long as 18 microseconds. The researchers cooled ultra-pure yttrium iron garnet spheres inside a mixed-phase cryostat and generated short-wavelength magnons that resist surface defects. Findings published in Science Advances show material purity limits lifespan rather than fundamental physics laws, enabling compact quantum computers potentially the size of a penny.