Physics: The prize for physics presented at the Xinhao Teleparallel ‘1996 New Physics Experiment’
The prize for physics was awarded on Tuesday to four people, two of which were physicists.
The committee said that the scientists had conductedgroundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like one unit even when they are separated. Their results, it said, cleared the way for “new technology based upon quantum information.”
The company said that their selection recognized the important of their experimental verification of spoofy action at a distance, a phenomenon of quantum mechanics that strains our imagination.
“I’m still kind of shocked but it’s a very positive shock. He was surprised when he found out he’d won the prize.
The winners’ work confirmed that “quantum mechanics actually has utility in real-world applications,” Michael Moloney, CEO of the American Institute of Physics, told CNN.
I was always interested in quantum mechanics from the first time I heard about it. I was struck by the theoretical predictions that did not fit the usual intuition one might have.”
“It’s not like in the Star Trek films transporting something – certainly not a person – over some distance, but the point is using entanglement you can transfer all the information carried by an object over to some other place … where the object is reconstituted. So far (it’s) only done with very small particles.”
“So 100 years ago or so, when Einstein came up with this, it was really like … this just doesn’t make sense. The light’s speed is the classical limit. How can they do this? So that’s what they were struggling with for a long time.”
How many quantum particles can we share? A tribute to Svante Pbo, whose work in ancient DNA led to the discovery of the secrets of humanity
Entanglement and nonlocality enable computer scientists to create uncrackable codes. A pair of particles are connected and distributed to two people. The particles’ shared properties can now serve as a code, one that will keep communications safe even from quantum computers—machines capable of breaking through classical encryption techniques. But why do we stop at two particles? In theory, there’s no upper limit on how many particles can share an entangled state. For decades, theoretical physicists imagined three-way, four-way, or even 100 way quantum connections as a way to allow a fully distributed quantum-protected internet. A lab in China appears to have achieved nonlocal entangled three particles at the same time, potentially increasing the strength of quantum cryptography and the possibilities for quantum networks generally.
The more than 100 students he worked with over the years made a huge contribution to him. He told young people to do what they find interesting.
On Monday, Swedish geneticist Svante Pbo was awarded the medicine award for his work on the use of ancient DNA to uncover the secrets of human evolution.
Nobel laureates in the fields of chemistry, literature and peace will be announced later this week, and the 2022 slate will conclude on Monday with the award for economics.
The original story was published in Quanta Magazine which is an editorially independent publication and has been used to improve public understanding of science.
Two-party nonlocality is crazy enough, according to a quantum information theorist at the University of New Orleans. “But it turns out quantum mechanics can do stuff that even goes beyond that when you have three parties.”
Physicists have entangled more than two particles before. Depending on who you speak to, the record is between 14 particles and 15 trillion. But these were only across short distances, just inches apart at the most. To make multiparty entanglement useful for cryptography, scientists need to go beyond simple entanglement and demonstrate nonlocality—“a high bar to achieve,” said Elie Wolfe, a quantum theorist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.
If the properties of one particle match up with the properties of the other, then there is no reason to believe that anything else could cause the effects. Radiation that affects the other may come from a particle that is still close to its twin. If they are a mile apart, they are most likely linked only by the speed with which they are measured. The experimenters use a set of equations called Bell inequalities to rule out other explanations for the particles.
The process of proving nonlocality is similar with three particles but there are more possibilities to rule out. The scientists have to prove the nonlocal relation of the three particles with a series of mathematical hoops, and this ballooning the complexity of both the measurement and the hoops. The way to approach it is to come up with a novel way to do it, and have the technology to make it work.