Lifeboat Foundation

Quantum science has not only deepened human understanding of the structure of matter and its microscopic interactions, but also introduced a new paradigm of computing and information science—quantum computing and quantum simulation. Quantum informatics research has won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Among many quantum computing and simulation platforms, Rydberg Atom Arrays is considered the most promising system to show quantum superiority among many programmable quantum simulator platforms in recent years due to its largest number of qubits and highest experimental accuracy.

Such optical lattices consist of individual neutral alkaline-earth atoms with significant dipole moments trapped in arrays of microscopic dipole traps, which can be optically moved at will to make desired lattice geometry. Each atom can be excited to its Rydberg state, and a pair of excited states interact through their dipole moments via a long-range interaction.

One of the most successful theories of 20th century science is cosmic inflation, which preceded and set up the hot Big Bang. W e also know how quantum fields generally work, and if inflation is a quantum field (which we strongly suspect it is), then there will always be more “still-inflating” space out there. Whenever and wherever inflation ends, you get a hot Big Bang. If inflation and quantum field theory are both correct, a Multiverse is a must.

When we look out at the Universe today, it simultaneously tells us two stories about itself. One of those stories is written on the face of what the Universe looks like today, and includes the stars and galaxies we have, how they’re clustered and how they move, and what ingredients they’re made of. This is a relatively straightforward story, and one that we’ve learned simply by observing the Universe we see.

But the other story is how the Universe came to be the way it is today, and that’s a story that requires a little more work to uncover. Sure, we can look at objects at great distances, and that tells us what the Universe was like in the distant past: when the light that’s arriving today was first emitted. But we need to combine that with our theories of the Universe — the laws of physics within the framework of the Big Bang — to interpret what occurred in the past. When we do that, we see extraordinary evidence that our hot Big Bang was preceded and set up by a prior phase: cosmic inflation. But in order for inflation to give us a Universe consistent with what we observe, there’s an unsettling appendage that comes along for the ride: a multiverse. Here’s why physicists overwhelmingly claim that a multiverse must exist.

There are many ways to interpret quantum mechanics, each weirder than the last. Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll says that the most plausible is the Many-Worlds theory.

The idea that an infinite number of parallel worlds could exist alongside our own is hard to wrap the mind around, but a version of this so-called Many Worlds theory could provide an answer to the controversial idea of quantum mechanics and its many different interpretations.

Bill Poirier, a professor of physics at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, proposed a theory that not only assumes parallel worlds exist, but also says their interaction can explain all the quantum mechanics “weirdness” in the observable universe.

Quantum entanglement is the binding together of two particles or objects, even though they may be far apart – their respective properties are linked in a way that’s not possible under the rules of classical physics.

It’s a weird phenomenon that Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance”, but its weirdness is what makes it so fascinating to scientists. In a 2021 study, quantum entanglement was directly observed and recorded at the macroscopic scale – a scale much bigger than the subatomic particles normally associated with entanglement.

The dimensions involved are still very small from our perspective – the experiments involved two tiny aluminum drums one-fifth the width of a human hair – but in the realm of quantum physics they’re absolutely huge.

A team of researchers from the University of Warsaw in Poland, the Institute Pascal CNRS in France, the Military University of Technology in Poland and the British University of Southampton has shown that it is possible to control the so-called exceptional points. For the first time, physicists also observed the annihilation of exceptional points from different degeneracy points. You can read about the discovery that may contribute to the creation of modern optical devices in the latest Nature Communications.

The universe around us is made of elementary particles, most of which have their antiparticles. When a particle and an antiparticle, that is, matter and antimatter, meet each other, annihilation occurs. Physicists have long been able to produce quasiparticles and quasiantiparticles—elementary excitations: charge, vibration, energy—trapped in matter, most often in crystals or liquids.

“The world of quasiparticles can be very complicated, although paradoxically, the quasiparticles themselves help simplify the description of quantum phenomena,” explains Jacek Szczytko from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw.

Information variations in a chain-like system are associated to energy transactions with the environment, which can take place reversibly or irreversibly, with a lower theoretical energy limit^22,23. Fluctuations as a consequence of pure computations are on the order of the thermal level (i.e., similar to kT, being k the Boltzmann constant and T the absolute temperature), according to Landauer’s principle. Such energies are negligible at routine human scales but become significant when the size of the system is nanoscopic or smaller, because the work and heat it generates also compare with the thermal level. Small systems are based on nanostructures, including individual molecules and arrangements of atoms, such as biological and quantum systems.

Fluctuation theorems have appeared in recent years explaining quantitatively energy imbalances between forward and reverse pathways or between equilibrium and non-equilibrium processes^24,25. They have been tested experimentally^26,27,28, mostly in biomolecular systems analyzed on a one-by-one basis²⁹. Most of these theorems establish relations among thermodynamic potentials for general systems, often with no specific insight into information theory. This theory, in turn, deals with spatially-indexed, 1-dimensional arrangements of symbols, which may not be necessarily associated to a time order. Recent generalizations separate the role of information and feedback control^30,31, but still the interpretation of non-Markovianity, irreversibility and reversibility in terms of purely informational operations such as reading, writing and error correction^32,33 remains obscured.

Here, we analyze energy exchanges associated to the symbolic management of a sequence of characters, without reference to the physical construction of the chain. Just by considering reversibility at the single sequence level and conservation laws, we next present two pairs of fluctuations equalities in the creation of information sequences, which use depends on energy exchange constraints. Our analysis integrates key information concepts, namely, reading, writing, proof reading and editing in the thermodynamic description of a string of symbols with information.

Join cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton as she discusses her ground-breaking theory, and how her path from communist Albania helped her become one of the most courageous thinkers on the world stage of theoretical physics. Watch the Q&A for this video here: https://youtu.be/6xpVP_ITEYE

Laura’s book “Before the Big Bang: The Origin of Our Universe from the Multiverse” is available to purchase now: https://geni.us/2TDDa.
Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe.

Continue reading “The origin of our universe from the multiverse — with Laura Mersini-Houghton” »

MIT PhD student Alex Greene studies superconducting quantum computing systems, working to reduce errors that limit the length and complexity of the “programs” the computers can run.

Black Holes Could Hold a Surprising Secret About Our UniverseTake gravity and mix it with quantum mechanics.