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Can Science Explain Everything? — Sean Carroll

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VIDEO NOTES

Sean Carroll is an American theoretical physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science.

Breakthrough laser technique holds quantum matter in stable packets

For the first time, physicists have generated and observed stable bright matter-wave solitons with attractive interactions within a grid of laser light.

In the quantum world, atoms usually travel as waves that spread out, but solitons stay concentrated in one spot. They have been created before in open space, but this is the first time they have been stabilized inside a repeating laser structure using attractive forces. This development gives scientists a new way to hold and guide clusters of atoms, a key requirement for developing future quantum technologies.

The research is published in a paper in Physical Review Letters.

Universe emerged as quantum Info running on computer

🚀 The Universe Runs on Quantum Information (Like a Computer 💻🌌)
https://lnkd.in/geGmy856
What if the universe didn’t start with matter or space…
but with information?

Not particles.
Not time.
Not gravity.

Just pure quantum information, like a computer that’s powered on but hasn’t loaded anything yet.

Scientists Uncover Hidden Weakness in Quantum Encryption

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a next generation method for protecting digital communications by drawing on the fundamental behavior of quantum particles. Instead of relying on mathematical complexity alone, QKD allows two users to establish a shared secret key in a way that is inherently resistant to interception, even if the communication channel itself is not private.

When an unauthorized observer attempts to extract information, the quantum states carrying the data are unavoidably altered, creating telltale disturbances that signal a potential security breach.

The real-world performance of QKD systems, however, depends on precise control of the physical link between sender and receiver. One of the most influential factors is pointing error, which occurs when the transmitted beam does not perfectly align with the receiving device.

Particle permutation task can be tackled by quantum but not classical computers, study finds

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, are expected to outperform classical computers on some complex tasks. Over the past few decades, many physicists and quantum engineers have tried to demonstrate the advantages of quantum systems over their classical counterparts on specific types of computations.

Researchers at Autonomous University of Barcelona and Hunter College of CUNY recently showed that quantum systems could tackle a problem that cannot be solved by classical systems, namely determining the even or odd nature of particle permutations without marking all and each one of the particles with a distinct label. This task essentially entails uncovering whether re-arranging particles from their original order to a new order requires an even or odd number of swaps in the position of particle pairs.

These researchers have been conducting research focusing on problems that entail the discrimination between quantum states for several years. Their recent paper, published in Physical Review Letters, demonstrates that quantum technologies could solve one of these problems in ways that are unfeasible for classical systems.

Magnetic ‘sweet spots’ enable optimal operation of hole spin qubits

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could reliably tackle various computational problems that cannot be solved by classical computers. These systems process information in the form of qubits, units of information that can exist in two states at once (0 and 1).

Hole spins, the intrinsic angular momentum of holes (i.e., missing electrons in semiconductors that can be trapped in nanoscale regions called quantum dots), have been widely used as qubits. These spins can be controlled using electric fields, as they are strongly influenced by a quantum effect known as spin-orbit coupling, which links the motion of particles to their magnetism.

Unfortunately, due to this spin-orbit coupling, hole spin qubits are also known to be highly vulnerable to noise, including random electrical disturbances that can prompt decoherence. This in turn can result in the loss of valuable quantum information.

Entangled atomic clouds enable more precise quantum measurements

Researchers at the University of Basel and the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel have demonstrated how quantum mechanical entanglement can be used to measure several physical parameters simultaneously with greater precision.

Entanglement is probably the most puzzling phenomenon observed in quantum systems. It causes measurements on two quantum objects, even if they are at different locations, to exhibit statistical correlations that should not exist according to classical physics—it’s almost as if a measurement on one object influences the other one at a distance.

The experimental demonstration of this effect, also known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics.

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