Lifeboat Foundation

^{Credit: VENTRIS/Science Photo Library via Getty Images}

^{By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation}

Quantum mechanics prohibits any quantum system from achieving a temperature that is equal to absolute zero. However, using Laser cooling, which is a highly efficient spectroscopic technique, atomic samples could be cooled to near absolute zero thus bringing them to their lowest achievable quantum energy state. Scientists have been advancing this technique for decades now and an important question that arose recently is whether carbon molecules, which are an integral component of life on earth, could be laser-cooled.

While we haven’t found any evidence of alien life yet, that doesn’t mean it’s not out there, beyond our reach. Now, a team of researchers has put together a mathematical model showing aliens could potentially be communicating across space – via quantum physics.

Efforts are well underway to make quantum communications a reality here on Earth. The idea is that quantum mechanics provide certain properties that would make information transfer inherently faster and more secure than regular systems… if we can get it to work.

One of the major hurdles to overcome before quantum networks can be established is that they’re very fragile and susceptible to interference. According to this latest study, such networks could fly across space without breaking up.

Quantum collaboration demonstrates in Chicagoland the first steps toward functional long-distance quantum networks over deployed telecom fiber optics, opening the door to scalable quantum computing — https://bit.ly/3QXe780

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A quantum simulator at Rice University is giving physicists a clear look at spin-charge separation, the quantum world’s version of the magician’s illusion of sawing a person in half.

A network in which data transmission is perfectly secure against hacking? If physicists have their way, this will become reality one day with the help of the quantum mechanical phenomenon known as entanglement. For entangled particles, the rule is: If you measure the state of one of the particles, then you automatically know the state of the other. It makes no difference how far away the entangled particles are from each other. This is an ideal state of affairs for transmitting information over long distances in a way that renders eavesdropping impossible.

A team led by physicists Prof. Harald Weinfurter from LMU and Prof. Christoph Becher from Saarland University have now coupled two atomic quantum memories over a 33-kilometer-long fiber optic connection. This is the longest distance so far that anyone has ever managed entanglement via a telecom fiber.

The quantum mechanical entanglement is mediated via photons emitted by the two quantum memories. A decisive step was the researchers’ shifting of the wavelength of the emitted light particles to a value that is used for conventional telecommunications. “By doing this, we were able to significantly reduce the loss of photons and create entangled quantum memories even over long distances of fiber optic cable,” says Weinfurter.

An international team consisting of Russian and German scientists has made a breakthrough in the creation of seemingly impossible materials. They have managed to create the world‘s first quantum metamaterial which can be used as a control element in superconducting electrical circuits.

Metamaterials.

Metamaterials are engineered materials that have properties not usually found in nature.

Recently, researchers have been incorporating graphene-based materials into superconducting quantum computing devices, which promise faster, more efficient computing, among other perks. Until now, however, there’s been no recorded coherence for these advanced qubits, so there’s no knowing if they’re feasible for practical quantum computing.

In a paper published today in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers demonstrate, for the first time, a coherent qubit made from graphene and exotic materials. These materials enable the qubit to change states through voltage, much like transistors in today’s traditional computer chips — and unlike most other types of superconducting qubits. Moreover, the researchers put a number to that coherence, clocking it at 55 nanoseconds, before the qubit returns to its ground state.

The work combined expertise from co-authors William D. Oliver, a physics professor of the practice and Lincoln Laboratory Fellow whose work focuses on quantum computing systems, and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at MIT who researches innovations in graphene.

University of Chicago physicists have invented a “quantum flute” that, like the Pied Piper, can coerce particles of light to move together in a way that’s never been seen before.

Described in two studies published in Physical Review Letters and Nature Physics, the breakthrough could point the way towards realizing quantum memories or new forms of error correction in quantum computers, and observing quantum phenomena that cannot be seen in nature.

Assoc. Prof. David Schuster’s lab works on quantum bits —the quantum equivalent of a computer bit—which tap the strange properties of particles at the atomic and sub-atomic level to do things that are otherwise impossible. In this experiment, they were working with particles of light, known as photons, in the microwave spectrum.

But Cabello and others are interested in investigating a lesser-known but equally magical aspect of quantum mechanics: contextuality. Contextuality says that properties of particles, such as their position or polarization, exist only within the context of a measurement. Instead of thinking of particles’ properties as having fixed values, consider them more like words in language, whose meanings can change depending on the context: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like bananas.”

Although contextuality has lived in nonlocality’s shadow for over 50 years, quantum physicists now consider it more of a hallmark feature of quantum systems than nonlocality is. A single particle, for instance, is a quantum system “in which you cannot even think about nonlocality,” since the particle is only in one location, said Bárbara Amaral, a physicist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. “So [contextuality] is more general in some sense, and I think this is important to really understand the power of quantum systems and to go deeper into why quantum theory is the way it is.”

Researchers have also found tantalizing links between contextuality and problems that quantum computers can efficiently solve that ordinary computers cannot; investigating these links could help guide researchers in developing new quantum computing approaches and algorithms.