Quantum walks, leveraging quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement, offer remarkable computational capabilities beyond classical methods.
These versatile models excel in diverse tasks, from database searches to simulating complex quantum systems. With implementations spanning analog and digital methods, they promise innovations in fields like quantum computing, simulation, and graph theory.
Harnessing Quantum Phenomena for Computation.
It’s time to stop doubting quantum information technology.
Are we there yet? No. Not by a long shot. But the progress on a number of key challenges, the sheer number of organizations fighting to succeed (and make a buck), the no-turning-back public investment, and nasty international rivalry are all good guarantors.
It feels like quantum computing is turning an important corner, maybe not the corner leading to the home stretch, but likely the corner beyond the turning back point. We now have quantum computers able to perform tasks beyond the reach of classical systems. Google’s latest break-through benchmark demonstrated that. These aren’t error corrected machines yet, but progress in error correction is one of 2024’s highlights.
A groundbreaking technique using time-resolved electron microscopy and multi-polarization lasers has allowed scientists to analyze plasmonic waves with great precision.
This method helped uncover the stable and dynamic nature of meron pairs’ spin textures, opening new avenues in nanoscale technology.
Advancing Plasmonics with Multi-Polarization Laser Techniques.
Inside the box, everything follows its own rules. Because every puzzle refers to observations, experiments or phenomenons from Schrödinger’s special topic: quantum physics.
Entire atoms have been put through a classic quantum experiment for the first time and the breakthrough could lead to better detectors for picking up the gravitational waves that ripple across the universe.
By Alex Wilkins
When quantum electrodynamics, the quantum field theory of electrons and photons, was being developed after World War II, one of the major challenges for theorists was calculating a value for the Lamb shift, the energy of a photon resulting from an electron transitioning from one hydrogen hyperfine energy level to another.
The effect was first detected by Willis Lamb and Robert Retherford in 1947, with the emitted photon having a frequency of 1,000 megahertz, corresponding to a photon wavelength of 30 cm and an energy of 4 millionths of an electronvolt—right on the lower edge of the microwave spectrum. It came when the one electron of the hydrogen atom transitioned from the 2P1/2 energy level to the 2S1/2 level. (The leftmost number is the principal quantum number, much like the discrete but increasing circular orbits of the Bohr atom.)
Conventional quantum mechanics didn’t have such transitions, and Dirac’s relativistic Schrödinger equation (naturally called the Dirac equation) did not have such a hyperfine transition either, because the shift is a consequence of interactions with the vacuum, and Dirac’s vacuum was a “sea” that did not interact with real particles.
Researchers demonstrated that relativistic quantum fields can be ‘universal embezzlers,’ extracting quantum states with minimal disturbance.
Scientists at Macquarie University have discovered a novel way to enhance quantum sensor performance using ordinary grapes.
By utilizing the water content and specific size of grapes, they created strong magnetic field hotspots that improve the efficiency of microwave-based quantum sensing.
Supermarket Grapes and Quantum Sensors.
What is the deepest level of reality? In this Quanta explainer, Vijay Balasubramanian, a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, takes us on a journey through space-time to investigate what it’s made of, why it’s failing us, and where physics can go next.
Explore black holes, holograms, “alien algebra,” and more space-time geometry: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-un…
00:00 — The Planck length, an intro to space-time.
1:23 — Descartes and Newton investigate space and time.
2:04 — Einstein’s special relativity.
2:32 — The geometry of space-time and the manifold.
3:16 — Einstein’s general relativity: space-time in four dimensions.
3:35 — The mathematical curvature of space-time.
4:57 — Einstein’s field equation.
6:04 — Singularities: where general relativity fails.
6:50 — Quantum mechanics (amplitudes, entanglement, Schrödinger equation)
8:32 — The problem of quantum gravity.
9:38 — Applying quantum mechanics to our manifold.
10:36 — Why particle accelerators can’t test quantum gravity.
11:28 — Is there something deeper than space-time?
11:45 — Hawking and Bekenstein discover black holes have entropy.
13:54 — The holographic principle.
14:49 — AdS/CFT duality.
16:06 — Space-time may emerge from entanglement.
17:44 — The path to quantum gravity.
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