Quantum Physics – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Feb 3
2020

New quantum switch turns metals into insulators

Most modern electronic devices rely on tiny, finely-tuned electrical currents to process and store information. These currents dictate how fast our computers run, how regularly our pacemakers tick and how securely our money is stored in the bank.

In a study published in Nature Physics, researchers at the University of British Columbia have demonstrated an entirely new way to precisely control such electrical currents by leveraging the interaction between an electron’s spin (which is the quantum magnetic field it inherently carries) and its orbital rotation around the nucleus.

“We have found a new way to switch the electrical conduction in materials from on to off,” said lead author Berend Zwartsenberg, a Ph.D. student at UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI). “Not only does this exciting result extend our understanding of how electrical conduction works, it will help us further explore known properties such as conductivity, magnetism and superconductivity, and discover new ones that could be important for quantum computing, data storage and energy applications.”

Feb 3
2020

Scientists cooled a nanoparticle to the quantum limit

A tiny nanoparticle has been chilled to the max.

Physicists cooled a nanoparticle to the lowest temperature allowed by quantum mechanics. The particle’s motion reached what’s known as the ground state, or lowest possible energy level.

In a typical material, the amount that its atoms jostle around indicates its temperature. But in the case of the nanoparticle, scientists can define an effective temperature based on the motion of the entire nanoparticle, which is made up of about 100 million atoms. That temperature reached twelve-millionths of a kelvin, scientists report January 30 in Science.

Feb 3
2020

Lego Cryonaut Found a Way to Make Quantum Computing More Affordable

Lego is an unusual candidate to make thermal computing cost less.

Feb 2
2020

Searching for Quantum Gravity

What is spacetime? How do physicists describe it? How does it relate to quantum gravity? Thomas Hartman passionately pursues these mysteries.

Jan 31
2020

Looking for Light Reading? NSF-backed ‘Comic Books’ Tackle Quantum Computing

Still baffled by quantum computing? How about turning to comic books (graphic novels for the well-read among you) for some clarity and a little humor on QC. The National Science Foundation has done just as part of its EPiQC (Enabling Practical-scale Quantum Computing) program. So far eight Zines have been created with more to come.

Comic books offer approachable ways to convey both humor and information. One might think that comic books would not be able to convey complex information like the ideas behind QC. In this case, one would be wrong, at least for one as creative as the University of Chicago s Diana Franklin, as part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded https://www.epiqc.cs.uchicago.edu/”>EPIQC Expedition in Computing, wrote Mark Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a recent blog for Computing Community Consortium, run by NSF.

In particular, Diana and colleagues have developed eight, with more coming, https://www.epiqc.cs.uchicago.edu/zines”>zines that are comic-book-like pamphlets obtained by printing and folding a single sheet of paper. The topics include quantum notation, superposition, and history. In my humble opinion, these are great examples of the synergy possible with research and education done together. Enjoy! .

Jan 31
2020

Dutch Scientists Just Shattered Our Conception Of How Information Will Travel In The Future

Essentially the higgs boson could allow for warp bubble technology to pop out of the space time continuum then basically pop back in.

Using quantum teleportation.

Jan 31
2020

Levitating sand escapes classical world, enters quantum ground state

O.o.

We’re close to being uncertain about where hundreds of millions of atoms are.

Jan 31
2020

Higgs mode and its decay in a two-dimensional antiferromagnet

Essentially the higgs mode is like a developer mode for materials and even physics by itself. It could make metals that are as light as a feather but essentially as strong as a universe. It could make essentially near infinitely strong metals that could be put on spaceships to handle all manners of energy blasts. Even weird things could happen where like even changing dimension al physics of areas. Essentially a near cartoon like physics or even prove the existence of the stranger things dimension really happened. Even keep out other dimensions from entering our universe. Even controlling the universe itself by healing it. Essentially like it could allow the monitor from halo kinda developer mode to modify gravity or all variables or even bring new variables into the dimension.

Condensed-matter analogues of the Higgs boson in particle physics allow insights into its behaviour in different symmetries and dimensionalities¹. Evidence for the Higgs mode has been reported in a number of different settings, including ultracold atomic gases², disordered superconductors³, and dimerized quantum magnets⁴. However, decay processes of the Higgs mode (which are eminently important in particle physics) have not yet been studied in condensed matter due to the lack of a suitable material system coupled to a direct experimental probe. A quantitative understanding of these processes is particularly important for low-dimensional systems, where the Higgs mode decays rapidly and has remained elusive to most experimental probes. Here, we discover and study the Higgs mode in a two-dimensional antiferromagnet using spin-polarized inelastic neutron scattering. Our spin-wave spectra of Ca₂RuO₄ directly reveal a well-defined, dispersive Higgs mode, which quickly decays into transverse Goldstone modes at the antiferromagnetic ordering wavevector. Through a complete mapping of the transverse modes in the reciprocal space, we uniquely specify the minimal model Hamiltonian and describe the decay process. We thus establish a novel condensed-matter platform for research on the dynamics of the Higgs mode.

Jan 31
2020

Alphabet Has a Second, Secretive Quantum Computing Team

Google’s parent Alphabet touted its quantum supremacy achievement last year. It doesn’t talk about a group at X working on software.

Google’s parent touted its quantum supremacy achievement last year. It doesn’t talk about a group at X working on software.

Jan 30
2020

This tiny glass bead has been quantum chilled to near absolute zero

A new method for manipulating the quantum state of particles could one day allow us to observe an object in two places at once. The technique has been used to chill a tiny glass bead into its coldest possible quantum state.

Once you get down to extremely small scales, heat and motion are interchangeable: the more a particle is moving, the hotter it is. So to cool down a small particle, you have to stop it moving. Because the rules of quantum mechanics mean you can never know exactly how fast a particle is moving, there is a limit to how cold a particle can get. When a particle is at that limit, we call it the particle’s ground state.