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Glass Nanosphere at its Quantum Limit as Scientists Slowed its Motion to the Lowest Quantum State
That tiny speck in the middle of the picture above is a glass nanosphere measuring 100 nanometer across (about 100 smaller than the width of a human hair).It's pretty small, but relatively large when compared to atomic-level stuff that scientists used to work with. Over time, physicists have continued to put ever larger objects at their quantum limit by cooling them down to near absolute zero.Now, researchers at ETH Zurich have managed to trap the tiny glass nanosphere using laser and slowed its thermal motion to the lowest quantum mechanical state.From ETH Zurich:The macroscopic object in [professor Lukas Novotny’s] laboratory is a tiny sphere made of glass. Although it is only a hundred nanometres in diameter, it consists of as many as ten million atoms. Using a tightly focused laser beam, the sphere is made to hover in an optical trap inside a vacuum container cooled down to 269 degrees below zero. The lower the temperature, the smaller is the thermal motion. “However, to clearly see quantum effects the nanosphere needs to be slowed down even more, all the way to its motional ground state”, explains Felix Tebbenjohanns, a postdoc in Novotny’s lab. The oscillations of the sphere, and hence its motional energy, are reduced to the point where the quantum mechanical uncertainty relation forbids a further reduction. “This means that we freeze the motional energy of the sphere to a minimum that is close to the quantum mechanical zero-point motion”, Tebbenjohanns says.While much of the scientific findings are academic, this achievement may one day help in creating a much more sensitive sensor technology.#quantumphysics #laser #nanosphere #glassImage: ETH Zurich
Scientists Used Optical Tweezers to Create a Mario Animation ... and the World's Most Powerful Quantum Computer
Mikhail Lukin and colleagues at the Harvard Quantum Initiative used optical tweezers to arrange single atoms in sequential frames into a fun video clip featuring our favorite plumber Mario.But fun aside, the new technique - which uses focused laser beams - has enabled them to develop a special type of quantum computer called a programmable quantum simulator capable of operating with 256 quantum bits or "qubits."From The Harvard Gazette:“The number of quantum states that are possible with only 256 qubits exceeds the number of atoms in the solar system,” [physics student and study lead author Sepehr Ebadi] said, explaining the system’s vast size.“The workhorse of this new platform is a device called the spatial light modulator, which is used to shape an optical wavefront to produce hundreds of individually focused optical tweezer beams,” said Ebadi. “These devices are essentially the same as what is used inside a computer projector to display images on a screen, but we have adapted them to be a critical component of our quantum simulator.”The initial loading of the atoms into the optical tweezers is random, and the researchers must move the atoms around to arrange them into their target geometries. The researchers use a second set of moving optical tweezers to drag the atoms to their desired locations, eliminating the initial randomness. Lasers give the researchers complete control over the positioning of the atomic qubits and their coherent quantum manipulation.#quantumcomputing #Mario #opticaltweezer #atom #laser #quantumphysics
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