Lifeboat Foundation

Argonne researchers pioneer “redox gating” — a new way to precisely modulate electron flow.

Breakthrough could help lead to the development of new low-power semiconductors or quantum devices.

As the integrated circuits that power our electronic devices get more powerful, they are also getting smaller. This trend of microelectronics has only accelerated in recent years as scientists try to fit increasingly more semiconducting components on a chip.

https://entanglion.github.io

Congratulations, your captain has retired and left you in charge of his galactic shipping business! Now it’s time to make some upgrades as you embark on a journey to reconstruct a quantum computer developed by an ancient race.

Entanglion is a cooperative board game designed for two players. Learn about quantum computing as you work together with your teammate to navigate the three galaxies of the quantum universe, avoid detection by the defense mechanisms left behind by the ancients, and rebuild the quantum computer.

Continue reading “Entanglion, a quantum computing board game developed by @IBMQuantum” »

A new method to measure the arrival times of electrons could aid in the design of future electron microscopes.

For researchers working to develop the next generation of electron microscopes, understanding the details of electron beams is essential. Now a research team has observed the weak repulsion of electrons in a continuous beam with the highest precision to date by measuring the number of electrons arriving at a detector within a timeframe of less than 1 picosecond (ps) [1]. With improvements, the new technique may be able to pick up the repulsion attributable to the Pauli exclusion principle. The researchers think the work may eventually help engineers design more sensitive electron microscopes based on quantum principles.

Many natural events such as rain falling are uncorrelated: the fall of each raindrop is independent of every other raindrop. Given a certain time window, say 1 second, the likelihood that zero, one, two, or more raindrops will fall within a certain area is predicted by a statistical distribution called a Poissonian. If, however, the raindrops could interact, then their arrivals might be correlated or anticorrelated—the drops could fall together more often or less often, depending on whether the interaction is attractive or repulsive. Then the probability of similarly timed raindrops would be either super-Poissonian (occurring more often) or sub-Poissonian (occurring less often).

Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed an innovative method for creating carbon-based quantum materials atom by atom. This method combines the use of scanning probe microscopy with advanced deep neural networks. The achievement underlines the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) in manipulating materials at the sub-angstrom level, offering significant advantages for basic science and potential future uses.

Open-shell magnetic nanographenes represent a technologically appealing class of new carbon-based quantum materials, which host robust π-spin centers and non-trivial collective quantum magnetism. These properties are crucial for developing high-speed electronic devices at the molecular level and creating quantum bits, the building blocks of quantum computers.

Continue reading “Quantum Leap in Material Science: Researchers Unveil AI-Powered Atomic Fabrication Technique” »

Physicists are pushing the limits of atomic clock accuracy by using spin-squeezed states, achieving groundbreaking control over quantum noise and entanglement, leading to potential leaps in quantum metrology.

While atomic clocks are already the most precise timekeeping devices in the universe, physicists are working hard to improve their accuracy even further. One way is by leveraging spin-squeezed states in clock atoms. Spin-squeezed states are entangled states in which particles in the system conspire to cancel their intrinsic quantum noise. These states, therefore, offer great opportunities for quantum-enhanced metrology since they allow for more precise measurements. Yet, spin-squeezed states in the desired optical transitions with little outside noise have been hard to prepare and maintain.

One particular way to generate a spin-squeezed state, or squeezing, is by placing the clock atoms into an optical cavity, a set of mirrors where light can bounce back and forth many times. In the cavity, atoms can synchronize their photon emissions and emit a burst of light far brighter than from any one atom alone, a phenomenon referred to as superradiance. Depending on how superradiance is used, it can lead to entanglement, or alternatively, it can instead disrupt the desired quantum state.

Mid-infrared and terahertz laser pulses serve as potent instruments for altering the characteristics of quantum materials by specifically tailoring their crystal lattice. The induction of ferroelectricity in SrTiO₃ when exposed to mid-infrared light is a significant example of this phenomenon. In this process, SrTiO₃ undergoes a change to a state where electrical dipoles are permanently aligned, a condition not found in its natural state of equilibrium. The process driving this remarkable transformation remains a mystery.

Now, a team of researchers of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Germany and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States has performed an experiment at the SwissFEL X-ray Free-Electron Laser to identify the intrinsic interactions relevant to creating this state. The new insight was gained not by detecting the position of the atoms, but by measuring the fluctuations of these atomic positions.

The result provides evidence that these fluctuations are reduced, which may explain why the dipolar structure is more ordered than in equilibrium, and why a ferroelectric state could be induced. The work by the Cavalleri group has appeared in Nature Materials.

Several sources are suggesting that OpenAI may be interested in pursuing quantum computing to power its artificial intelligence.

We use two 1D quasicondensates in a double potential well to realize a bosonic Josephson junction, a microscopic system that gives rise to interesting quantum phenomena resulting from the interplay of quantum tunneling and interaction. The multimode characteristics within the quasicondensates make the system suitable as a quantum field simulator. To prepare quantum states, we split a single condensate into two and, consequently, we witness the dynamical evolution of quantum fluctuations in the relative degree of freedom between the two split condensates. We demonstrate how to use these dynamics to effectively prepare more strongly correlated quantum states and how those influence spatial phase coherence.

Our work introduces innovative methods for engineering correlations and entanglement in the external degree of freedom of interacting many-body systems. It is a leap forward in understanding and harnessing quantum correlations, paving the way for exciting possibilities in quantum simulation research.

Everybody involved has long known that some math problems are too hard to solve (at least without unlimited time), but a proposed solution could be rather easily verified. Suppose someone claims to have the answer to such a very hard problem. Their proof is much too long to check line by line. Can you verify the answer merely by asking that person (the “prover”) some questions? Sometimes, yes. But for very complicated proofs, probably not. If there are two provers, though, both in possession of the proof, asking each of them some questions might allow you to verify that the proof is correct (at least with very high probability). There’s a catch, though — the provers must be kept separate, so they can’t communicate and therefore collude on how to answer your questions. (This approach is called MIP, for multiprover interactive proof.)

Verifying a proof without actually seeing it is not that strange a concept. Many examples exist for how a prover can convince you that they know the answer to a problem without actually telling you the answer. A standard method for coding secret messages, for example, relies on using a very large number (perhaps hundreds of digits long) to encode the message. It can be decoded only by someone who knows the prime factors that, when multiplied together, produce the very large number. It’s impossible to figure out those prime numbers (within the lifetime of the universe) even with an army of supercomputers. So if someone can decode your message, they’ve proved to you that they know the primes, without needing to tell you what they are.