Quantum theory is peerless at explaining reality, but assaults our intuitions of how reality should be. It seems likely the fault lies with our intuitions.
JILA researchers have tricked nature by tuning a dense quantum gas of atoms to make a congested “Fermi sea,” thus keeping atoms in a high-energy state, or excited, for about 10% longer than usual by delaying their normal return to the lowest-energy state. The technique might be used to improve quantum communication networks and atomic clocks.
Quantum systems such as atoms that are excited above their resting state naturally calm down, or decay, by releasing light in quantized portions called photons. This common process is evident in the glow of fireflies and emission from LEDs. The rate of decay can be engineered by modifying the environment or the internal properties of the atoms. Previous research has modified the electromagnetic environment; the new work focuses on the atoms.
The new JILA method relies on a rule of the quantum world known as the Pauli exclusion principle, which says identical fermions (a category of particles) can’t share the same quantum states at the same time. Therefore, if enough fermions are in a crowd—creating a Fermi sea—an excited fermion might not be able to fling out a photon as usual, because it would need to then recoil. That recoil could land it in the same quantum state of motion as one of its neighbors, which is forbidden due to a mechanism called Pauli blocking.
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If you get a dense quantum gas cloud cold enough, you can see right through it. This phenomenon, called Pauli blocking, happens because of the same effects that give atoms their structure, and now it has been observed for the first time.
“This has been a theoretical prediction for more than three decades,” says Amita Deb at the University of Otago in New Zealand, a member of one of three teams that have now independently seen this. “This is the first time this been proven experimentally.”
Pauli blocking occurs in gases made up of a type of particle called a fermion, a category that includes the protons, neutrons and electrons that make up all atoms. These particles obey a rule called the Pauli exclusion principle, which dictates that no two identical fermions can occupy the same quantum state in a given system.
Aiming to emulate the quantum characteristics of materials more realistically, researchers have figured out a way to create a lattice of light and atoms that can vibrate – bringing sound to an otherwise silent experiment.
When sound was first incorporated into movies in the 1920s, it opened up new possibilities for filmmakers such as music and spoken dialogue. Physicists may be on the verge of a similar revolution, thanks to a new device developed at Stanford University that promises to bring an audio dimension to previously silent quantum science experiments.
In particular, it could bring sound to a common quantum science setup known as an optical lattice, which uses a crisscrossing mesh of laser beams to arrange atoms in an orderly manner resembling a crystal. This tool is commonly used to study the fundamental characteristics of solids and other phases of matter that have repeating geometries. A shortcoming of these lattices, however, is that they are silent.
While traditional computers use magnetic bits to represent a one or a zero for computation, quantum computers use quantum bits or qubits to represent a one or a zero or simultaneously any number in between.
Today’s quantum computers use several different technologies for qubits. But regardless of the technology, a common requirement for all quantum computing qubits is that it must be scalable, high quality, and capable of fast quantum interaction with each other.
IBM uses superconducting qubits on its huge fleet of about twenty quantum computers. Although Amazon doesn’t yet have a quantum computer, it plans to build one using superconducting hardware. Honeywell and IonQ both use trapped-ion qubits made from a rare earth metal called ytterbium. In contrast, Psi Quantum and Xanadu use photons of light.
Fundamental Research On Ethical & Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, For Health, Environment, And A Sustainable Future — Dr. Patrick van der Smagt, Ph.D., Director, ArtificiaI Intelligence Research, Volkswagen.
Dr. Patrick van der Smagt is Director of ArtificiaI Intelligence Research, Volkswagen AG, and Head of Argmax. AI (https://argmax.ai/), the Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab, in Munich, focusing on a range of research domains, including probabilistic deep learning for time series modelling, optimal control, reinforcement learning robotics, and quantum machine learning.
IBM’s new Quantum Computer breaks the current world record in terms of Qubits and ushers in a new era of quantum supremacy. It’s also IBM’s last chance of potentially undoing its rise and fall among the biggest tech companies in the world that has been occuring these last few years. The Eagle Quantum computer has 127 qubits and can outperform the fastest supercomputers in the world in certain tasks and calculations. Whether or not Google’s Quantum AI company will come back from behind is currently uncertain. But one thing is for sure: The future of Quantum Computers does look very bright.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 IBM’s Last Chance.
01:23 The competetive field of Quantum Computing.
02:19 How this Quantum Computer was made.
04:00 What is Neven’s Law?
06:35 And the goal of all this is…
09:22 Last Words.
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#ibm #quantumcomputer #ai
At long last, physicists from Harvard and MIT have found the killer application for quantum computing: a Mario Bros. GIF made from qubits. The qubits (quantum bits) can also be arranged in a Space Invaders design, or Tetris, or any other shape—your geometrical wish is the qubits’ command.
The GIFs are from QuEra Computing, a Boston startup emerging from stealth, to show off the programmability of their 256-qubit quantum simulator —a special-purpose quantum computer built for solving certain types of problems.
OAKLAND, Calif. Nov 17 (Reuters) — A new quantum computer startup born from researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) called QuEra Computing said on Wednesday it raised $17 million from investors, including Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc (4755.T).
It’s the latest quantum computer hardware maker to come out of the lab at a time when funding for the nascent technology is booming. read more
While there are various technologies for creating so-called quantum bits or qubits where the computations happen, QuEra’s qubits use neutral atoms in a vacuum chamber and use lasers to cool and control them.
