By Newsroom America Feeds at 11:43 am Eastern
SUMMARY: Rice University physicists probe the boundaries of light-matter interactions as they bridge traditional condensed matter physics and cavity-based quantum optics.
Rice university office of public affairs / news & media relations.
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast and ETH Zurich, Switzerland, have created a new theoretical framework which could help physicists and device engineers design better optoelectronics, leading to less heat generation and power consumption in electronic devices which source, detect, and control light.
Speaking about the research, which enables scientists and engineers to quantify how transparent a 2D material is to an electrostatic field, Dr Elton Santos from the Atomistic Simulation Research Centre at Queen’s, said: “In our paper we have developed a theoretical framework that predicts and quantifies the degree of ‘transparency’ up to the limit of one-atom-thick, 2D materials, to an electrostatic field.
“Imagine we can change the transparency of a material just using an electric bias, e.g. get darker or brighter at will. What kind of implications would this have, for instance, in mobile phone technologies? This was the first question we asked ourselves. We realised that this would allow the microscopic control over the distribution of charged carriers in a bulk semiconductor (e.g. traditional Si microchips) in a nonlinear manner. This will help physicists and device engineers to design better quantum capacitors, an array of subatomic power storage components capable to keep high energy densities, for instance, in batteries, and vertical transistors, leading to next-generation optoelectronics with lower power consumption and dissipation of heat (cold devices), and better performance. In other words, smarter smart phones.”
A collaboration of physicists and a mathematician has made a significant step toward unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics by explaining how spacetime emerges from quantum entanglement in a more fundamental theory. The paper announcing the discovery by Hirosi Ooguri, a Principal Investigator at the University of Tokyo’s Kavli IPMU, with Caltech mathematician Matilde Marcolli and graduate students Jennifer Lin and Bogdan Stoica, will be published in Physical Review Letters as an Editors’ Suggestion “for the potential interest in the results presented and on the success of the paper in communicating its message, in particular to readers from other fields.”
Physicists and mathematicians have long sought a Theory of Everything (ToE) that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics. General relativity explains gravity and large-scale phenomena such as the dynamics of stars and galaxies in the universe, while quantum mechanics explains microscopic phenomena from the subatomic to molecular scales.
The holographic principle is widely regarded as an essential feature of a successful Theory of Everything. The holographic principle states that gravity in a three-dimensional volume can be described by quantum mechanics on a two-dimensional surface surrounding the volume. In particular, the three dimensions of the volume should emerge from the two dimensions of the surface. However, understanding the precise mechanics for the emergence of the volume from the surface has been elusive.
Quantum mechanics, though firmly tested, is so weird and anti-intuitive that famed physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Attempts to explain some of the bizarre consequences of quantum theory have led to some mind-bending ideas, such as the Copenhagen interpretation and the many-worlds interpretation.
Now there’s a new theory on the block, called the “many interacting worlds” hypothesis (MIW), and the idea is just as profound as it sounds. The theory suggests not only that parallel worlds exist, but that they interact with our world on the quantum level and are thus detectable. Though still speculative, the theory may help to finally explain some of the bizarre consequences inherent in quantum mechanics, reports RT.com.
Related Article: There Is A Mysterious Staggering Connection Between The Déjà Vu Phenomenon And Parallel Universes
With this week’s overload of news flashes about the Quantum Satellite launch, I restrained from publishing too much repeat news on the launch. However, I came across an excellent article from NASAspaceflight.com that provides additional and good details about some of the initial “publically known” experiments that are to be conducted by the Chinese.
Of course, as with any government agency, not all information is shared.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/08/long-march-2d-quantu…satellite/
The Chinese have launched the first satellite that can achieve quantum communications between space and Earth. The launch of the Quantum Science Satellite – called Mozi – took place at 17:40 UTC on Monday using a Long March-2D (Chang Zheng-2D) launch vehicle from the 603 Launch Pad of the LC43 complex at the Jiuquan space center. Chinese Launch: The new satellite is dedicated to quantum science experiments. The Quantum Space Satellite, (or Quantum Experiments at Space Scale) will test the phenomena of quantum entanglement.
Operated by the China Academy of Sciences, this 500 kg satellite – announced as the name “Mozi” in honor of a fifth century BC Chinese scientist – contains a quantum key communicator, quantum entanglement emitter, entanglement source, processing unit, and a laser communicator.
QUESS will relay transmissions between two ground stations (one in China, and the other in Europe) transmitting quantum keys.
Another great example where scientists are bridging bio and technology together.
Fluorescent proteins from jellyfish that were grown in bacteria have been used to create a laser for the first time, according to a new study.
The breakthrough represents a major advance in so-called polariton lasers, the researchers said. These lasers have the potential to be far more efficient and compact than conventional ones and could open up research avenues in quantum physics and optical computing, the researchers said.
Traditional polariton lasers using inorganic semiconductors need to be cooled to incredibly low temperatures. More recent designs based on organic electronics materials, like those used in organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, operate at room temperature but need to be powered by picosecond (one-trillionth of a second) pulses of light. [Science Fact or Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-Fi Concepts].
Quantum computing 101 — lesson 1: quantum models
Before reviewing in more detail the most promising experimental realisations of quantum information processors, I think it is useful to recap the basic concepts and most used models of quantum computing. In particular, the models, as the physical realisations mentioned in a previous post use different but equivalent computational models, which need to be understood to comprehend their implementations.
Since QUESS has been online, China has been able to deliver the 1st set of programmable code, transmit communications back-and-forth from the satellite, and now they have been able to expand the memory capacity up to 100 Qubits. These are pretty big steps since the satellite has been in orbit on Tuesday.
BTW — the 1st 2 events are directly a result of QUESS; the 3rd advancement isn’t the result of QUESS and resulted after QUESS’ launch.
Although Chinese scientists said there is still a long way to go before any ultrapowerful machine can be developed, progress has been made in terms of quantum memory technology, which is a key component to quantum computing and quantum communication.
On Tuesday, China launched the world’s first quantum experimental satellite in an attempt to build a space-based quantum communication network.
Zhou Zongquan, a scientist in the field, told China Daily that following the breakthrough in 2011 when scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China developed the world’s first quantum memory of 1 quantum bit, or qubit, they have now developed a memory of 100 qubits.