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Category: quantum physics

(Phys.org)—In a new study, physicists at Penn State University have for the first time proposed a way to test a little-understood form of quantum mechanics called nonassociative quantum mechanics. So far, all other tests of quantum mechanics have dealt with the associative form, so the new test provides a way to explore this relatively obscure part of the theory.

“Nonassociative has been of mathematical interest for some time (and has recently shown up in certain models of String Theory), but it has been impossible to obtain a physical understanding,” coauthor Martin Bojowald at Penn State told Phys.org. “We have developed methods which allow us to do just that, and found a first application with a characteristic and instructive result. One of the features that makes this setting interesting is that much of the usual mathematical toolkit of quantum mechanics is inapplicable.”

Standard quantum mechanics is considered associative because mathematically it obeys the associative property. One of the fundamental concepts of standard quantum mechanics is the wave function, which gives the probability of finding a quantum system in a particular state. (The wave function is what determines the likelihood of Schrödinger’s cat being dead or alive, before the box is opened.) Mathematically, wave functions are vectors, and the mathematical operations involving vectors and the operators that act on them always obey the associative property (AB)C=A(BC), where the way that the parentheses are set doesn’t matter.

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Which mean for us?

Recently, quantum gates and quantum circuits have been found when portfolios of stocks were simulated in quantum computation processes, pointing out to the existence of a bizarre quantum code beneath the stock market transactions. The quantum code of the stock market might prove to have a more profound signification if is related to the recent finding of quantum codes at the deepest levels of our reality, such as quantum mechanics of black holes and the space-time of the universe. Could this mysterious stock market quantum code be a tiny fragment of a quantum code that our universe uses to create the physical reality?

John Preskill’s talk „Is spacetime a quantum error-correcting code?” held at the Center for Quantum Information and Control, University of New Mexico, and previously at Kavli Institute for Theoretical physics, may represent a turning point in physical research related to questioning the existence and evolution of our Universe. The essence of this talk may change forever our understanding of the Universe, shifting the perspective of physical research from masses and energies to codes of information theory.

John Preskill, professor at California Institute of Technology, is well known mostly for his remarkable developments of quantum computational models, more specifically topological quantum computing. Preskill’s lectures inspire a whole generation of brilliant physicists working on quantum computation. This experience in quantum computing may point out Dr. Preskill to knock at the Universe gates with the unique perspective of a quantum code reality.

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Scientists from the University of Queensland have used photons (single particles of light) to simulate quantum particles travelling through time. The research is cutting edge and the results could be dramatic!

Their research, entitled “Experimental simulation of closed timelike curves “, is published in the latest issue of Nature Communications. The grandfather paradox states that if a time traveler were to go back in time, he could accidentally prevent his grandparents from meeting, and thus prevent his own birth.

However, if he had never been born, he could never have traveled back in time, in the first place. The paradoxes are largely caused by Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the solution to it, the Gödel metric.

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For the first time, scientists have achieved infinite speeds on a microchip. Although this advance will not enable faster-than-light starships, the light-warping technology behind this innovation could lead to new light-based microchips and help enable powerful quantum computers, researchers said.

Light travels at the speed of about 670 million miles per hour (1.08 billion km/h) in a vacuum, and is theoretically the fastest possible speed at which matter or energy can travel. Exceeding this speed limit should lead to impossible results such as time travel, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

However, in a way, researchers have overcome this barrier for decades. [Warped Physics: 10 Effects of Faster-Than-Light Travel].

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When people talk about the next-generation of computers, they’re usually referring to one of two things: quantum computers – devices that will have exponentially greater processing power thanks to the addition of quantum superposition to the binary code – and optical computers, which will beam data at the speed of light without generating all the heat and wasted energy of traditional electronic computers.

Both of those have the power to revolutionise computing as we know it, and now scientists at the University of Technology, Sydney have discovered a material that has the potential to combine both of those abilities in one ridiculously powerful computer of the future. Just hold on for a second while we freak out over here.

The material is layered hexagonal boron nitride, which is a bit of a mouthful, but all you really need to know about it is that it’s only one atom thick – just like graphene – and it has the ability to emit a single pulse of quantum light on demand at room temperature, making it ideal to help build a quantum optical computer chip.

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It seems evident that Microsoft is joining other top tech companies in betting on quantum computing with a clear business strategy in mind: to become the market leader in software development platforms for quantum computing. If quantum computers become the next supercomputing revolution in 2025, Microsoft stock will take a quantum leap.

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In general relativity, closed timelike curves can break causality with remarkable and unsettling consequences. At the classical level, they induce causal paradoxes disturbing enough to motivate conjectures that explicitly prevent their existence. At the quantum level such problems can be resolved through the Deutschian formalism, however this induces radical benefits—from cloning unknown quantum states to solving problems intractable to quantum computers. Instinctively, one expects these benefits to vanish if causality is respected. Here we show that in harnessing entanglement, we can efficiently solve NP-complete problems and clone arbitrary quantum states—even when all time-travelling systems are completely isolated from the past. Thus, the many defining benefits of Deutschian closed timelike curves can still be harnessed, even when causality is preserved. Our results unveil a subtle interplay between entanglement and general relativity, and significantly improve the potential of probing the radical effects that may exist at the interface between relativity and quantum theory.

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An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of a new type of particle called the type-II Weyl fermion in metallic materials. When subjected to a magnetic field, the materials containing the particle act as insulators for current applied in some directions and as conductors for current applied in other directions. This behavior suggests a range of potential applications, from low-energy devices to efficient transistors.

The researchers theorize that the particle exists in a material known as tungsten ditelluride (WTe2), which the researchers liken to a “material universe” because it contains several , some of which exist under normal conditions in our universe and others that may exist only in these specialized types of crystals. The research appeared in the journal Nature this week.

The new particle is a cousin of the Weyl fermion, one of the particles in standard theory. However, the type-II particle exhibits very different responses to electromagnetic fields, being a near perfect conductor in some directions of the field and an insulator in others.

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