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Large and difficult to wrestle with, molecules have long resisted physicists’ attempts to trap them in a state of quantum entanglement, where molecules are tightly bound together. mole at a distance.
Now, for the first time, two different teams have succeeded in trapping pairs of cold molecules using the same technique: ‘tweezer traps’ professional designer.
Quantum entanglement is a strange but important phenomenon of the quantum realm that scientists are trying to use to build the first, commercial quantum computers.
All matter – from electrons to atoms to molecules to even entire galaxies – can be described as a spectrum before it is observed. It is only when a property is measured that the wheel of space is fixed in a clear definition.
If two objects are entangled, knowing something about the properties of one object – its spin, position, or force – immediately acts as a measure on the other, and stop all their car wheels as possible.
Until now, researchers have been able to use ions, photons, atoms, and superconducting circuits in home research. For example, three years ago, a team trapped millions of atoms in a ‘hot and empty’ gas. Nice, but not very useful.
Physics is also entangled atom and molecule first, and even special effects found in plant cells. But the control and manipulation of pairs of individual molecules – with complete accuracy for comparison purposes – is a much more difficult task.
Molecules are hard to cool and easily interact with their surroundings, which means they can easily fall out of their delicate quantum states (so-called dysfunctional).
One example of those interactions is dipole-dipole interaction: the way in which the positive end of a polar molecule can be pulled towards the negative end of another molecule.
But these same properties make molecules promising candidates for qubits in quantum computing because they offer new opportunities for organization.
“Their long-lived molecular states create strong qubits while the long-lived dipolar interactions between molecules produce them. quantum entanglement,” explained Harvard University doctor Yicheng Bao and his colleagues, in their paper.
Qubits are the quantum version of classical computing bits, which can have a value of 0 or 1. Qubits, on the other hand, can be represented. many combinations possible is 1 and 0 at the same time.
By perturbing qubits, their discrete combinations of 1s and 0s can be used as fast calculators in specially designed algorithms.
Molecules, which are more complex than atoms or particles, have more specific properties, or states, that can be forced to join together to form a qubit.
“This means that, in practical terms, there are new ways of storing and using quantum information,” said Yukai Lu, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering at Princeton University, co-authored the second study.
“For example, a molecule can vibrate and rotate in many ways. So, you can use these two ways to install a qubit. If the type of molecule is polar, there are two molecules Molecules can interact even when separated by space.”
Both teams created ultra-cold calcium monofluoride (CaF) molecules and captured them, one at a time, with optical tweezers.
Using these tightly coupled beams of laser light, the molecules were arranged in pairs, as close as one CaF molecule could sense the connection. long electric dipolar of its counterpart. This caused the individual molecules to be joined together in a larger state before they became aliens.
The method, with its direct use of individual molecules, “paves the way for the development of new structures for special technologies,” written Augusto Smerzi, a doctor at the National Research Council of Italy, in a shared view.
Smerzi was not involved in the study, but saw its potential. By using the dipole interactions of molecules, he said the system could one day be used to develop more sensitive electronic devices that can detect electrical currents.
“The applications start from electroencephalography to measure the electrical current in the brain to monitor changes in the electrical current in the earth’s ground for information on earthquakes,” he said. speculation.