A brief description of a groundbreaking interdisciplinary project
🧭 To All The Curious Minds Out There
What if the next breakthrough in quantum physics doesn’t come from a state of the art lab, but instead from natural crystal found in an ancient desert?
My name is Dr. Aaron Breidenbach. I’m a recent graduate in condensed matter physics from Stanford University. Over the past few years, I’ve grown and studied two of the most promising quantum materials known to physics: Anarakite (AKA Herbertsmithite) and Zn-Barlowite✨. See our recent nature physics paper.
These crystals are prime candidates for a long-theorized but notoriously difficult to manifest state of matter: the quantum spin liquid (QSL). This material is defined by long-range quantum magnetic entanglement and magnetic disorder that persists even at temperatures near absolute zero (Han et al 2012). My thesis provided some of the strongest evidence to date of the existence of this QSL state in these crystals. This research was so impactful that it was recognized via the DOE on their social media, among other press.
Due to their properties, these crystals are a strong candidate to be used in quantum computing technologies, primarily due to their extraordinary degree of quantum entanglement (https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2025-11-14-these-colorful-crystals-may-hold-clues-future-quantum-computers). As these technologies evolve, they have the potential to radically reshape our understanding of computation and quantum physics.
🔮 The Mystery Thickens: On Natural Quantum Crystals in The Atacama
In addition to their novel quantum properties and their strange hexagonal kagome lattices, Anarakite has another unique property, which distinguishes it from most other crystals being studied in physics today; it grows in nature. But it’s even more spectacular than that:
This is exciting and could have several major implications for modern quantum materials physics. Magnetic impurities have been an issue that have plagued quantum spin liquid research for the past two decades. This issue of magnetic impurities was an essential theme in my thesis, and it is still an active area of scientific research and debate in the QSL community. In my nature physics paper, the proposed magnetic impurity signals were over a factor of five larger than the “intrinsic” quantum spin liquid signal. Essentially, we’re attempting to pull a needle out of a haystack, and this makes it very difficult for us to learn more about this mysterious and potentially useful state of quantum matter.
I might have found a solution to a two decades old problem in experimental quantum physics in the waste tailings of an abandoned mine in Chile. This is by far the coolest thing I will ever accomplish in my lifetime. I am proud to announce that I have been approved for two different experiments at US national labs to further investigate the purity of these natural crystals and their potential implications for modern quantum physics. Please see my blog for more details on these upcoming measurements!
How on earth is this possible (pun intended)? We still really don’t know. Unfortunately, even though geologists study natural crystals, and physicists study synthetic crystals, geologists rarely talk to physicists these days due to a lack of interdisciplinary collaboration in the western sciences. I’m happy to say that I’ve been working hard with geologists this past year to try to understand the natural formation of high-purity Anarakite and help bridge this gap. It might be the case that geological formation over millions of years allows these crystals to become more pure, simply due to the vastly different thermodynamics of geological time. In another sense, the earth also does chemistry at much larger scales than a lab beaker, so perhaps it is inevitable that she eventually produced something spectacular simply through repeated trial and error. It is a strong reminder that us humans can’t always compete with the majesty of mother nature.
Speaking of which, it is more important now than ever that we remind ourselves of the intrinsic value of nature, given we are in an era of climate change and over industrialization.
Anarakite and The Shadow of Extractive Colonialism
Although breathtaking and inspiring, this discovery of high-purity Anarakite sat in the shadow of something tragic:
This promising quantum material is currently being dissolved away en-masse as low grade copper ore.
The irony could not possibly be any more cruel for me: this is a bad omen. It takes me a full work week plus nine months of waiting to grow synthetic quantum spin liquid crystals. Millions of US taxpayer dollars are invested into researching this material each year. And yet, somehow, no one in QSL physics had bothered to look in the geological databases before, much less get their hands dirty in Chile.
Meanwhile, these same extractive processes that destroy the quantum crystals also cause many health issues in local communities in the Atacama. Overmining has caused the region’s largest river to be depleted to only a quarter of its flow, relative to a baseline taken just 100 years ago. The local ecology and landscape of the Atacama has been irreversibly shaped by the footprint of mining. Such problems are likely only going to get worse in the coming century. The Atacama remains one of the world’s largest suppliers of both lithium and copper, and these raw materials are absolutely essential to green-energy technologies used in solar and wind farms. Sadly, we might need to sacrifice an entire river basin to save the world’s lungs. The least we can do is honor Chile and the Atacama for doing this.
Stanford’s Colonial and Ecological Footprint in Chile
It is worth considering how the ecological situation got so bad in the Atacama in the first place. The industrialization of the Atacama and overextraction are likely both a somewhat inevitable byproduct of global demand for copper and lithium in an increasingly interconnected world.
However, there are still better and worse ways to go about extracting valuable resources from the land, and Chile has been notoriously lax in its environmental regulations for mining since it such an important export for the country.
These issues got much worse under Dictator Augusto Pinochet. His military government spearheaded many mining deregulations which all but eliminated any environmental protections that were in place. Among the worst of these was the 1981 water code, which introduced a market liberalization of water resources; water use naturally increased in response to this, and made existing ecological problems much worse. These changes were instituted largely by the neoliberal “Chicago Boys”. These were a group of professors from the University of Chicago that trained economists that ended up in high positions of dictator Pinochet’s government.
Although this was mostly driven by the University of Chicago, Stanford’s Hoover Institution was heavily involved as well. Many influential Chicago economists later went on to become Hoover fellows, and there was generally a lot of collaboration between these two places with respect to US economic influence in Chile. Hence, it really isn’t much of a stretch to say that Stanford’s own economic policies lead to the environmental destruction of a precious quantum mineral that their own physicists are actively researching. This is just about the definition of a bad omen; it gets worse than this though.
😔 The Tragedy Deepens
Beyond ecological destruction, Pinochet’s dictatorship was absolutely horrible in its human rights record. Human rights reports confirm that he killed at least 3,000 political dissidents, tortured over 25,000, and exiled an additional 200,000. As an alumni, I am personally ashamed that Stanford was willing to turn a blind eye to all of these human rights violations to work with Pinochet directly. Due to their involvement with Pinochet, Stanford’s Hoover Institution contains an extensive archive of documents on Chile during Pinochet’s reign, including extensive commentary from the involvement of their own fellows.
I recently searched through this archive, and what I found was quite disturbing. I specifically found several long lists of specifically named Chilean citizens that were severely punished for political protests during Pinochet’s reign. Hoover’s archives are only accessible on site, so there’s a strong likelihood that no Chilean citizen has ever seen these documents. I am actively working with human rights organizations in Chile with respect to the release of this information from Hoover. These lists include political protestors in the labor and copper spheres. Such political punishment inevitably would have assisted these Hoover and Chicago fellows in achieving their economic goals for Chile.
To make matters worse, Hoover fellows have continued to write flowery posthumous articles about the dictatorship with egregious titles such as “What Pinochet Did for Chile”. Here, they attempt to argue that the legacy of their efforts left behind the “most successful country in Latin America”. I know the truth, though. What Pinochet did for Chile was largely to increase the country’s GDP via virtue of large scale ecological destruction and the mass execution of anyone that stood in the way of these economic goals, including prominent labor organizers. Pinochet’s Chile is only Latin America’s most successful country when using normative neoliberal measures such as GDP. If we were instead to consider the higher ideals of a free press, equality, ecological conservation, labor rights, and human rights, Chile would be among the least successful, largely due to Stanford’s efforts.
Anarakite vs Herbertsmithite: A Symbol of Colonial Erasure
One conscientious and controversial decision I have made is to refer to the crystals I study as Anarakite, rather than the more conventional name, Herbertsmithite. Indeed, it would seem as though this crystal has gone by several different names throughout human history. It is really hard to say when this crystal was first found and named by humans, since it grows all around the world near to the earth’s surface. Direct archeological evidence confirms that Anarakite and related minerals were found by ancient Andean societies in the Atacama Desert and smelted for copper over 1,000 years ago. These people likely had a name for these crystals. However, the indigenous language of the Atacama, Kunza, is currently extinct, because Spanish colonists would harshly punish any speakers, often by cutting off their tongues.
This is but one example of how indigenous cultures, languages, and worldviews are erased by colonial processes. And there is an eerie direct parallel in Herbertsmithite. This crystal was originally characterized to a western standard as a new mineral by an Iranian student named Adib in 1973. He found this crystal outside of Anarak, Iran, and hence, he named it Anarakite. The international mineralogical association (IMA) rejected his claim for a new mineral though, since there were some technical concerns over some of his measurements. Despite this, you can see Anarakite referenced as a mineral in other literature after this, since it was still actively studied. In 2004, a British group led by Braithwaite et al finally did a more detailed characterization that more or less confirmed that Adib’s 1973 assessment was correct. However, they used this as an opportunity to rename the crystal in honor of a British mineralogist, Herbert Smith. I see strong irony and parallels in this. Perhaps we are not so savage so as to literally cut the tongues off of indigenous peoples anymore, but clearly, we still suppress their languages and cultures, by naming anything of note after westerners. Such processes erase more than just languages and cultures though. It is also worth considering what technologies have been lost to such processes.
The trouble with the mines is more than just geology and crystals too. It was once considered to be sacred terrain by the indigenous Atacameño (Lickan Antay) and Aymara people, who see the mountains and stars as living beings. Many mountains in the region are still actively worshiped with elaborate altars of crystals and offerings of coca. Their animistic cosmology invites us to see the world not as inert — but awake, relational, and full of spirit. And yet, in the foreground of the same land, entire mountains of copper are dissolved in sulfuric acid for trace amounts of copper. Poisoning the air and water and destroying the magical crystals.
Indigenous communities have suffered a lot due to these industrial activities. They lost their way of life. Farming became impossible as water was diverted to the mines, and toxic dust coated the fields. This forced most to work in the very mines that destroyed their ancestral way of life. This further disconnected them from the land and from their roots.
All the while, we watch nervously. Biting our nails as us westerners being to see AI becoming more and more alive each day in silica. I ponder if it was alive all along. Continuously growing, like us, from its origins as a seedling of a once sacred mountain. I wonder what the more exotic seeds of the Atacama might grow into some day…
🕊️ My Personal Calling
My path to this work began long before Stanford — with a seizure after brain surgery at age twelve, and a vision I didn’t yet understand.
While my doctors and family saw it as a medical emergency, I found myself in a very different space:
a state of blissful stillness, surrounded by radiant, intelligent presences.
I had left my body and was watching from above — immersed in a realm that felt deeply real, yet completely beyond ordinary perception.
At the time, I suppressed the experience. I was afraid of being pathologized — labeled, medicated, misunderstood, and maybe even locked away. But in 2024, after years of depression and internal questioning, I began meditating and working with sacred plant medicines. These practices reawakened the visions, and I finally began to understand:
This wasn’t a malfunction.
This was an initiation.
In many Indigenous and animist cultures, seizures and near-death experiences are seen as spiritual callings — moments when the soul crosses a threshold and glimpses the other world.
Rather than being labeled pathological, these experiences mark someone as a potential shaman:
a bridge between worlds. A translator between seen and unseen.
I now understand that my seizure was not just medical — it was a doorway.
This is probably the most controversial part of my story. Shaman is quite the title to claim for oneself. But I will continue to work tirelessly every day for what I believe in.
Because I see the connection. Because if it weren’t for these occurrences, I would have never gone to Chile. I would never have had the guts to follow my dreams. Dreams that no one else in academia seemed to understand at times. And dreams that shook me viscerally, blurring the line between the waking and spirt world.
This call still beckons me. When talking with local archeologists, I discovered that optical technology was actually quite advanced in the Incan era. And that many such artifacts were actually found on Atacamenian and Aymara land. At the summits of sacred volcanos, which contain record breaking intensities of light from their God Inti, the sun.
So working with indigenous leaders, we will summit these living deities of earth. And we will try to see what we can see in these ancient magic crystals, using only what they had back in the day.
And in doing so, I hope to see what the ancient shaman (Yatiri) saw. Maybe they saw something special in these crystals. Maybe it was forgotten for 500 years more. Only to be reunited, as the Eagle and Condor flew together once again.
Thank you to everyone for all the love and support on this incredible journey 🫶
The Quantum Geologist 