Scientist manage to create quantum entanglement on diamonds

[Napalm]

Surprized there wasn't a thread on this.

 

Scientists have linked two diamonds in a mysterious process called entanglement that is normally only seen on the quantum scale.

 

Entanglement is so weird that Einstein dubbed it "spooky action at a distance." It's a strange effect where one object gets connected to another so that even if they are separated by large distances, an action performed on one will affect the other. Entanglement usually occurs with subatomic particles, and was predicted by the theory of quantum mechanics, which governs the realm of the very small.

 

But now physicists have succeeded in entangling two macroscopic diamonds, demonstrating that quantum mechanical effects are not limited to the microscopic scale.

 

"I think it's an important step into a new regime of thinking about quantum phenomena," physicist Ian Walmsley of England's University of Oxford said."That is, in this regime of the bigger world, room temperatures, ambient conditions. Although the phenomenon was expected to exist, actually being able to observe it in such a system we think is quite exciting."

 

Another study recently used quantum entanglement to teleport bits of light from one place to another. And other researchers have succeeded in entangling macroscopic objects before, but they have generally been under special circumstances, prepared in special ways, and cooled to cryogenic temperatures. In the new achievement, the diamonds were large and not prepared in any special way, the researchers said.

 

"It's big enough you can see it," Walmsley told LiveScience of the diamonds."They're sitting on the table, out in plain view. The laboratory isn't particularly cold or particularly hot, it's just your everyday room."

 

Walmsley, along with a team of physicists led by Oxford graduate student Ka Chung Lee, accomplished this feat by entangling the vibration of two diamond crystals. To do so, the researchers set up an apparatus to send a laser pulse at both diamonds simultaneously. Sometimes, the laser light changed color, to a lower frequency, after hitting the diamonds. That told the scientists it had lost a bit of energy.

 

Because energy must be conserved in closed systems (where there's no input of outside energy), the researchers knew that the "lost" energy had been used in some way. In fact, the energy had been converted into vibrational motion for one of the diamonds (albeit motion that is too small to observe visually). However, the scientists had no way of knowing which diamond was vibrating.

 

Then, the researchers sent a second pulse of laser light through the now-vibrating system. This time, if the light emerged with a color of higher frequency, it meant it had gained the energy back by absorbing it from the diamond, stopping its vibration.

 

The scientists had set up two separate detectors to measure the laser light — one for each diamond.

 

If the two diamonds weren't entangled, the researchers would expect each detector to register a changed laser beam about 50 percent of the time. It's similar to tossing a coin, where random chance would lead to heads about half the time and tails the other half the time on average.

 

Instead, because the two diamonds were linked, they found that one detector measured the change every time, and the other detector never fired. The two diamonds, it seemed, were so connected they reacted as a single entity, rather than two individual objects.

 

The scientists report their results in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Science.

 

"Recent advances in quantum control techniques have allowed entanglement to be observed for physical systems with increasing complexity and separation distance," University of Michigan physicist Luming Duan, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an accompanying essay in the same issue of Science."Lee et al. take an important step in this direction by demonstrating entanglement between oscillation patterns of atoms—phonon modes—of two diamond samples of millimeter size at room temperature, separated by a macroscopic distance of about 15 cm."

 

In addition to furthering scientists' understanding of entanglement, the research could help develop faster computers called photonic processors, relying on quantum effects, said Oxford physicist Michael Sprague, another team member on the project.

 

"The long-term goal is that if you can harness the power of quantum phenomena, you can potentially do things more efficiently than is currently possible," Sprague said.

 

http://www.livescience.com/17264-quantum-entanglement-macroscopic-diamonds.html

[Saru Inc]

interesting

[Arceus]

Yes, that sounds quite captivating...:)

[Aten]

Jesus, teleportation of light signals... in before computers start rendering 1080p video as quickly as plaintext.

[kamykazee]

I had actually seen a documentary narrated by Brian Greene on this about 2 weeks ago. It's a Nova documentary called 'Quantum Leap', i'm sure those really interested will find it. It explains the idea in a way that is easy to understand with no need for any knowledge in physics.

 

I was aware they were conducting experiments on particles i believe, successfully even, but something the size of diamonds? wow....

[Dizzle229]

Wow, they've been sciencing up the place these past few months. Pretty cool.

[RpgGamer]

I want to see it happen, else I'm skeptical. Anyone can make light frequencies change. "teleporting" light just seems bizarre, and I'd like to see that happen too.

 

I mean, it seems unreasonable that if the two diamonds were put in separate rooms, that flashing light at one would cause the other to vibrate [not to mention, vibrate at such a rate it's unobservable to the naked eye].

 

The uses of such a thing, if actually possible could be really cool though. And really crazy.

[kamykazee]

I want to see it happen, else I'm skeptical. Anyone can make light frequencies change. "teleporting" light just seems bizarre, and I'd like to see that happen too.

 

I mean, it seems unreasonable that if the two diamonds were put in separate rooms, that flashing light at one would cause the other to vibrate [not to mention, vibrate at such a rate it's unobservable to the naked eye].

 

The uses of such a thing, if actually possible could be really cool though. And really crazy.

 

Well, with the diamonds i'm not sure. But in quantum mechanics this strange occurence has been proven to exist for about 40-50 years, that is to say: If two very small objects or pieces of matter (even one on the moon and one on earth) are in quantum entanglement, they affect each other in various ways. A good example to imagine this would be two spinning wheels: you spin them and when they stop spinning they lannd on either blue or red. Place one on the moon and one on earth. By spinning the one located on earth, let's say you get blue. Now, IF the two are in quantum entanglement that means you are guaranteed to get red on the wheel located on the moon. And vicerversa, if you get red on the wheel located on earth, you will without doubt get blue on the other. So, despite them being that far apart, whatever happens on one wheel instantly affects what happens on the other. That is what quantum mechanics says; it has been predicted since the 1930's and proven since the 1950's or so. Weird? Yes. Does it actually exist? Undoubtedly.

 

That's why Einstein called it Spooky action at a distance and refused to believe in it. The uses of such a thing have been successfully tried out for the past years in teleporting light from one island to another. By teleporting, we understand going from one place to another without crossing the distance between them. That is to say, in this case, they would destroy the light particle on one island and recreate and identical copy on the other, which effectively ment teleportation.

 

All of this i got from watching the Nova documentary 'Quantum Leap', lol. It also details some other things that just don't make sense, but which are true.

[Dizzle229]

Magic. Got it.

[Guest Rob]

I love science.

[Albel]

I love science.

I do too. I may not understand it all the time, but it's amazing.

[H2PM]

Witchcraft, burn the heretics!

[Danqazmlp]

I really don't understand it but it sounds cool.