It may revolutionize how we approach quantum computing.
Category: particle physics – Page 106
“Interfacing two key devices together is a crucial step forward in allowing quantum networking, and we are really excited to be the first team to have been able to demonstrate this,” said Dr. Sarah Thomas.
How close are we to making quantum computing a reality? This is what a recent study published in Science Advances hopes to address as an international team of researchers discuss recent progress in how quantum information is both stored and then transmitted over long distances using a quantum memory device, which scientists have attempted to develop for some time. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the processes responsible for not only making quantum computing a reality, but also enabling it to work as seamlessly as possible.
While traditional telecommunications technology uses “repeaters” to prevent the loss of information over long distances, quantum computing cannot use such technology since it will destroy quantum information along the way. While quantum computing uses photons (particles of light) to send information, storing the information using a quantum memory device for further dissemination has eluded researchers for some time. Therefore, to combat the problem of sending quantum information over long distances, two devices are required: the first will send the quantum information while the second will store them for later dissemination.
It is the linking of these two devices that this recent study addresses, as the team of more than a dozen researchers successfully connected these two devices using optical fibers to send the data, which is being hailed as a first step in developing quantum systems. This breakthrough was accomplished with the collaboration of several European universities involving the creation of a quantum dot light source and integrating it with the quantum memory device.
For the first time, scientists have managed to create sheets of gold only a single atom layer thick. The material has been termed goldene. According to researchers from Linköping University, Sweden, this has given the gold new properties that can make it suitable for use in applications such as carbon dioxide conversion, hydrogen production, and production of value-added chemicals. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Synthesis.
Scientists have long tried to make single-atom-thick sheets of gold but failed because the metal’s tendency to lump together. But researchers from Linköping University have now succeeded thanks to a hundred-year-old method used by Japanese smiths.
“If you make a material extremely thin, something extraordinary happens—as with graphene. The same thing happens with gold. As you know, gold is usually a metal, but if single-atom-layer thick, the gold can become a semiconductor instead,” says Shun Kashiwaya, researcher at the Materials Design Division at Linköping University.
Long-anticipated experiments that use light to mimic gravity are revealing the distribution of energies, forces, and pressures inside a subatomic particle for the first time.
Photonic quantum computation, a type of quantum computation that uses light particles or photons, is divided into two main categories: discrete-variable (DV) and continuous-variable (CV) photonic quantum computation. Both have been realized experimentally and can be combined to overcome individual limitations. Photonic quantum computation is important as it can perform specific computational tasks more efficiently. It has several advantages, including the ability to observe and engineer quantum phenomena at room temperature, maintain coherence, and be engineered using mature technologies. The future of photonic quantum computing looks promising due to the significant progress in photonic technology.
Photonic quantum computation is a type of quantum computation that uses photons, particles of light, as the physical system for performing the computation. Photons are ideal for quantum systems because they operate at room temperature and photonic technologies are relatively mature. The field of photonic quantum computation is divided into two main categories: discrete-variable (DV) and continuous-variable (CV) photonic quantum computation.
In DV photonic quantum computation, quantum information is represented by one or more modal properties, such as polarization, that take on distinct values from a finite set. Quantum information is processed via operations on these modal properties and eventually measured using single photon detectors. On the other hand, in CV photonic quantum computation, quantum information is represented by properties of the electromagnetic field that take on any value in an interval, such as position. The electromagnetic field is transformed via Gaussian and non-Gaussian operations and then detected via homodyne detection.
Peter Higgs, who gave his name to the subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson, has died aged 94. He was always a modest man, especially when considering that he was one of the greats of particle physics—the area of science concerned with the building blocks of matter.
Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information can be transmitted from one location to another, with the help of classical communication and previously shared quantum entanglement between the sending and receiving location. This process is not to be confused with teleportation as depicted in science fiction, where matter is instantaneously transported from one location to another. Instead, quantum teleportation involves the transfer of quantum states between particles at different locations without any physical movement of the particles themselves.
In a recent study by Isiaka Aremua and Laure Gouba, the researchers explored the teleportation of a qubit using exotic entangled coherent states. A qubit, or quantum bit, is the basic unit of quantum information. It is a quantum system that can exist in any superposition of its two basis states. The researchers used a system of an electron moving on a plane in uniform external magnetic and electric fields to construct different classes of coherent states.
Coherent states are specific states of a quantum harmonic oscillator. They are often described as the quantum equivalent of classical states because they closely resemble the behavior of classical particles. In the context of quantum teleportation, coherent states are used to form entangled states, which are crucial for the teleportation process.
Peter Atkins discusses the ideas in his book ‘Conjuring the Universe’ with fellow science writer Jim Baggott. They discuss how fundamental the various constants of the universe truly are.
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Professor Peter Atkins is a fellow of Lincoln College in the University of Oxford and the author of about seventy books for students and a general audience. His texts are market leaders around the globe. A frequent lecturer in the United States and throughout the world, he has held visiting professorships in France, Israel, Japan, China, and New Zealand. He was the founding chairman of the Committee on Chemistry Education of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and was a member of IUPAC’s Physical and Biophysical Chemistry Division. Peter was the 2016 recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Grady-Stack Award for science journalism.
Jim Baggott is a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to work with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields; Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’; and The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments.
This is our Muon Shot
Posted in futurism, particle physics
In December, the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, called P5, released its recommendations for the future of the field, based on the input from the Snowmass process.
The US physics community dreams of building a muon collider.
How much of Venus’s atmosphere is being stripped by the Sun, and what can this tell us about how the planet lost its water long ago? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as a team of international researchers examined data obtained from a 2021 Venus flyby by the BepiColombo spacecraft, which is a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA) currently en route to Mercury. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of planetary atmospheres, both within our solar system and beyond.
“Characterizing the loss of heavy ions and understanding the escape mechanisms at Venus is crucial to understand how the planet’s atmosphere has evolved and how it has lost all its water,” said Dr. Dominique Delcourt, who is a CNRS researcher at the Plasma Physics Laboratory (LPP) and the Principal Investigator of the Mass Spectrum Analyzer (MSA) instrument onboard BepiColombo, and a co-author on the study.
During its journey to Mercury, BepiColombo needs to conduct several gravity assists to slow down enough to enter Mercury’s orbit, with one such gravity assist occurring at Venus on August 10, 2021. During this flyby, BepiColombo passed through Venus’s magnetosheath, which is Venus’s version of a weak magnetic field that is produced by charged particles from the Sun interacting with Venus’s upper atmosphere. Over the course of 90 minutes, BepiColombo and its powerful instruments successfully measured data on how much atmospheric loss Venus is currently experiencing, which could help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of Venus’s atmosphere, and specifically how the planet lost its water long ago.