The ‘just right’ structure that emerges when you drive a system containing light and matter (like the universe), neither too fast nor too slow across a quantum phase transition. It illustrates the findings of the study titled “Enhanced dynamic light-matter entanglement from driving neither too fast nor too slow,” published in the journal Physical Review. Credit: Oscar Acevedo, Universidad de los Andes, and Neil Johnson, University of Miami. The study is a collaboration between the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia and the University of Miami.
By studying a system that couples matter and light together, like the universe, researchers have found crossing a quantum phase transition at intermediate speeds generates the richest, most complex structure. Such structure resembles ‘defects’ in an otherwise smooth and empty space.
Just as in the well-known children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, something good happens when things are done in moderation, rather than in extremes. The new study has translated “not too hot or too cold, just right” to the quantum world and the generation of quantum entanglement – the binding within and between matter and light -and suggests that the universe started “neither too fast nor too slow.”
“Our findings suggest that the universe was ‘cooked’ at just the right speeds,” said Prof Neil Johnson. “Our paper provides a simple model that can be realized in a lab on a chip, to explore how such defect structure develops as the speed of cooking changes.”The big mystery concerning the origin of the universe is how the star clusters, planetary systems, galaxies, and other objects that we now see managed to evolve out of nothing. There is a widespread belief within the scientific community that the birth of structure in the universe lies in the crossing of a quantum phase transition and that the faster the transition is crossed, the more structure it generates. The current findings contradict that belief.
The study sheds light on how to generate, control, and manipulate quantum entanglement, since the defects contain clusters of quantum entanglement of all sizes. The findings hold the key to futuristic technologies especially ultrafast quantum computing, ultrasafe quantum cryptography, high-precision quantum metrology, quantum teleportation of information.
In the quantum world, the system can undergo a phase transition at 0K temp, simply by changing the amount of interaction between the light and matter. This phase transition generates quantum entanglement in the process.”If you cross the transition at the right speed (cook at right speed), the structures (lumps) that appear are far more complex – more ‘tasty’ – than when crossing fast or slow,” said Johnson. “Since it is a quantum phase transition that is being crossed, the structures that appear contain clumps of quantum entanglement.” http://news.miami.edu/stories/2015/09/quantum-entanglement.html
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