2022 Nobel Prize in Physics winner. Photo/Nobel Prize Committee official website
According to Xinhua News Agency , Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on October 4 that it will award the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics to French scientist Alan Aspe , American scientist John Crowze and Austrian scientist Anton Cailinger for their contributions in "entangling photon experiments, verifying violations of Bell inequality and creating quantum information science ".
For ordinary people, quantum science and quantum entanglement are extremely high-end theories, and most people cannot understand and understand them. In this regard, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences also tried to popularize the explanation, briefly describing the research results of Aspe, Clauze and Cailinger. The three of them each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum state , in which two particles behave like a unit even when separated. Their results clear the way for new technologies based on quantum information.
What is quantum entanglement?
Quantum mechanics has an indescribable huge impact and has begun to be applied. The application field of quantum mechanics is not what was previously believed to be very cutting-edge and has great limitations, but has a broad field of research and utilization, including quantum computer , quantum networks and secure quantum encrypted communication. A key factor in the application and development of quantum mechanics is how two or more particles are allowed to exist in the so-called " entangled state ". What happens to one particle in the "entangled state" determines what happens to another particle, even if they are very far apart.
Obviously, the explanation of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cannot be understood by too many people. Therefore, it can be explained in more dimension reduction and combined with quantum communication to understand. The so-called quantum refers to the smallest unit that can exhibit the characteristics of a certain matter or physical quantity. If a physical quantity has the smallest indivisible basic unit, this physical quantity is quantized, and the smallest unit is called quantum.
particles refer to the smallest component of matter that can exist in a free state. Therefore, in physics, the phenomenon that affects each other in a system composed of two or more particles is called quantum entanglement. Einstein calls quantum entanglement "ghostly over-distance " (ghostly long-distance interoperability), and Einstein suspects that quantum mechanics is not a complete theory after noticing the puzzling properties of entangled quantum states.
In layman's terms, quantum entanglement is the smallest matter, such as the contact, superposition, and entanglement between particles (photons), atoms, , which is like a chaotic state of information transmission and communication. Because of such communication, quantum communication, quantum computers, and quantum Internet can be realized. However, information propagation requires media such as air (sonic wave), water (wave), electric (wave), and fiber , etc. With these media, compatibility and understanding of information (such as the same language, English or Chinese), as well as the interface to receive when the information arrives.
2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was announced on site. Photo/Xinhua News Agency
The place where quantum entanglement works
Now, human communications include QQ, WeChat, etc. Even so, people still feel that it is slow and not safe, so quantum entanglement has a place where it works.
In 2010, the California Institute of Technology research team realized the entanglement between four quantum interfaces. Later, through , Duan Luming's team at Tsinghua University, used beam multiplexing technology to realize quantum entanglement between 25 quantum interfaces for the first time in the experiment, which was about 6 times higher than the entanglement between the four quantum interfaces with the highest record. This also means that in the future, not only can quantum communication and quantum Internet be connected through quantum interfaces, but the communication and network speed will be greatly improved.
In addition, public information shows that in 2017, Academician of of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Pan Jianwei and others used "Mozi" quantum science experimental satellite for experiments. At a communication distance of 1,200 kilometers, the quantum deception state light source on satellite sent an average of 40 million signal photons per second. A transorbit docking experiment can generate a 300kbit security key, with an average code rate of up to 1.1kbps.
is called star-ground bidirectional quantum entanglement distribution, and its transmission efficiency is 20 orders of magnitude higher than the current terrestrial fiber channel at the same distance, which is a trillion times higher. This is like the difference between a person walking to Mars (if there is a road) and the speed of light (the propagation speed of light waves or electromagnetic waves in a vacuum or medium, 300,000 kilometers per second) to reach Mars.
In 2018, the team of McArthur Xilanpa, a professor at the University of Alto in Finland, successfully quantum entangled two tympanic membranes , vibrating alone. Each eardrum has a width of only 15 microns, about the width of the hair, and is made of 1015 metal aluminum atoms. Through a superconducting microwave circuit, the two eardrums interacted for about 30 minutes at nearly absolute zero (-273°C).
These studies have proved that quantum entanglement is not interoperability of ghosts or telepathy, but actual existence. However, they are based on the research results of Aspe, Crowze and Cailinger.
The key is that in the 1960s, John Stewart Bell proposed the Bell inequality, indicating that if there are hidden variables, the correlation between a large number of measurement results will never exceed a certain value. However, Crowze designed experiments to measure, demonstrating the practical significance of quantum mechanics by a clear violation of Bell's inequality, meaning that quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by the theory of using hidden variables.
Asper also designed an experiment to prove that the correlation between the wave function of two particles still exists because they were once part of the same wave function and were not disturbed before measuring one of the particles.
Cai Linge's team has proved through experiments a phenomenon called quantum teleportation, which can move quantum states from one particle to a particle at a distance.
With the pioneering work of these three people, quantum communication and quantum computers have begun to show signs. In 2019, Google said that they have been able to use a 53 qubit quantum computer to achieve tasks that traditional computers cannot complete. This quantum computer completes the calculation of a specific task in 3 minutes and 20 seconds. If one of the world's best-performing supercomputers, the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, can perform the same task, it will take about 10,000 years.
Although Google later withdrew this paper, it also shows that quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement will be of great use in networks, IT and computers. All of this depends on the research results of Aspe, Crowze and Cailinger. This year's Nobel Prize in Physics awarded them is a recognition of quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement theory.
However, this theory may have to undergo long-term testing in the future.
Written by Zhang Tiankan (column author)
Editing / Ma Xiaolong
Proofreading / Liu Yue
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