Lifeboat Foundation

Evidence has emerged for long-proposed, but previously unconfirmed quasiparticles called anyons. The concept of anyons goes back 43 years, and physicists have found evidence collections of particles are behaving as anyons for some time, but have lacked confirmation. Now, within months of each other, two teams have found different methods to verify that this is what they are dealing with that look much more conclusive.

The universe’s particles are divided into two sorts; fermions and bosons. Fermions, including the components of atoms, cannot occupy the same quantum state as each other while bosons, which include photons of light, have no such problem.

Continue reading “Physicists Think They Have Found Long-Sought Two-Dimensional Quasiparticles” »

Quantum radar can find it.

The hunt for the ever-elusive “Planet Nine” has taken scientists down some very strange roads. The idea that a planet exists in the outer reaches of our solar system and can’t be easily seen has been floating around for some time, and observations of other objects in the area suggest that there’s something big generating a gravitational pull. The easiest explanation would be a planet, but it’s not the only possibility.

Over the past few years, researchers have been trying to apply quantum physics theory to a variety of fields, including robotics, biology and cognitive science. Computational techniques that draw inspiration from quantum systems, also known as quantum-like (QL) models, could potentially achieve better performance and more sophisticated capabilities than more conventional approaches.

Researchers at University of Genoa, in Italy, have recently investigated the feasibility of using a QL approach to enhance a robot’s sensing capabilities. In their paper, pre-published on arXiv, they present the results of a case study where they tested a QL perception model on a robot with limited sensing capabilities within a simulated environment.

“The idea for this study came to me after reading an article written in 1993 by Anton Amann, (‘The Gestalt problem in quantum theory’) in which he compared the problem of Gestalt perception with the attribution of molecular shape in quantum physics,” Davide Lanza, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “I was amazed by this parallel between cognition and quantum phenomena, and I discovered then the flourishing field of quantum cognition studies.”

July 13, 2020—Researchers at Columbia Engineering and Montana State University report today that they have found that placing sufficient strain in a 2-D material—tungsten diselenide (WSe2)—creates localized states that can yield single-photon emitters. Using sophisticated optical microscopy techniques developed at Columbia over the past three years, the team was able to directly image these states for the first time, revealing that even at room temperature they are highly tunable and act as quantum dots, tightly confined pieces of semiconductors that emit light.

“Our discovery is very exciting, because it means we can now position a single-photon emitter wherever we want, and tune its properties, such as the color of the emitted photon, simply by bending or straining the material at a specific location,” says James Schuck, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who co-led the study published today by Nature Nanotechnology. “Knowing just where and how to tune the single-photon emitter is essential to creating quantum optical circuitry for use in quantum computers, or even in so-called ‘quantum’ simulators that mimic physical phenomena far too complex to model with today’s computers.”

Developing quantum technologies such as quantum computers and quantum sensors is a rapidly developing field of research as researchers figure out how to use the unique properties of quantum physics to create devices that can be much more efficient, faster, and more sensitive than existing technologies. For instance, quantum information—think encrypted messages—would be much more secure.

But, he added, the method took about 10 minutes to produce 1,024 random strings, whereas current cryptographic processes would need far faster number generators.

The new technique’s first real-world use will come when it’s incorporated into NIST’s randomness beacon, a public source of randomness for researchers studying unpredictability, Bierhorst said.

But he added that he hopes the experimental setup could one day be shrunk enough to fit on a computer chip and help in the creation of “unhackable” messages.

In 2019, the MAGIC telescopes detected the first Gamma Ray Burst at very high energies. This was the most intense gamma-radiation ever obtained from such a cosmic object. But the GRB data have more to offer: with further analyses, the MAGIC scientists could now confirm that the speed of light is constant in vacuum — and not dependent on energy. So, like many other tests, GRB data also corroborate Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. The study has now been published in Physical Review Letters.

Einstein’s general relativity (GR) is a beautiful theory that explains how mass and energy interact with space-time, creating a phenomenon commonly known as gravity. GR has been tested and retested in various physical situations and over many different scales, and, postulating that the speed of light is constant, it always turned out to outstandingly predict the experimental results. Nevertheless, physicists suspect that GR is not the most fundamental theory, and that there might exist an underlying quantum mechanical description of gravity, referred to as quantum gravity (QG).

Some QG theories consider that the speed of light might be energy dependent. This hypothetical phenomenon is called Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). Its effects are thought to be too tiny to be measured, unless they are accumulated over a very long time. So how to achieve that? One solution is using signals from astronomical sources of gamma rays. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are powerful and far away cosmic explosions, which emit highly variable, extremely energetic signals. They are thus excellent laboratories for experimental tests of QG. The higher energy photons are expected to be more influenced by the QG effects, and there should be plenty of those; these travel billions of years before reaching Earth, which enhances the effect.

face_with_colon_three circa 2019.

Invisible to the eye, the dots glow under infrared light from modified smartphones.

New ground-breaking research from the University of Surrey could change the way scientists understand and describe lasers—establishing a new relationship between classical and quantum physics.

In a comprehensive study published by the journal Progress in Quantum Electronics, a researcher from Surrey, in partnership with a colleague from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Fraunhofer IOSB in Germany, calls into question 60 years of orthodoxy surrounding the principles of lasers and the laser spectral linewidth—the foundation for controlling and measuring wavelengths of light.

In the new study, the researchers find that a fundamental principle of lasers, that the amplification of light compensates for the losses of the laser, is only an approximation. The team quantify and explain that a tiny excess loss, which is not balanced by the amplified light but by normal luminescence inside the laser, provides the answer to the spectral linewidth of the laser.

Researchers at MIT have developed a process to manufacture and integrate “artificial atoms” with photonic circuitry, and in doing so, are able to produce the largest quantum chip of its kind.

The atoms, which are created by atomic-scale defects in microscopically thin slices of diamond, allow for the scaling up of quantum chip production.

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