Last month, three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in proving one of the world’s most controversial facts. They showed that quantum particles should be viewed as a single system—their parts continuously connected—even though the particles are separated by great distances. In practice, this phenomenon of “non-locality” means that the system you have in front of you can be instantly affected by something thousands of miles away.
Interference and non-locality enable computer scientists to create immutable code. In a process known as an independent quantum key system, particles are linked and shared between two individuals. The shared properties of these particles could act as codes, which could secure communication with quantum computers – machines that could break old coding systems.
But why stand on two things? Theoretically, there is no upper limit on the number of particles that can share a fixed phase. For years, physicists have been thinking about three-way, four-way, even 100-way quantum – the kind of thing that would allow a fully secure Internet. Now, a lab in China has achieved what appears to be an inconsistency between three particles at once, which could expand the power of quantum cryptography and the potential of many networks.
“The volatility of the two groups is as crazy as it gets,” said Peter Bierhorst, a data scientist at the University of New Orleans. “But it happens that quantum mechanics can do things that go beyond that when you have three parties.”
Astronomers have messed with more than two objects in the past. The record is somewhere between 14 and 15 trillion particles, depending on who you ask. But these were short distances, literally inches apart. For multi-party integration to be effective in capturing passwords, scientists will need to go beyond entanglement and demonstrate non-locality—”a great way to achieve it,” said Elie Wolfe, a population researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo. , Canada.
The key to verifying their absence is to test whether the appearance of one object corresponds to that of the other – a sign of occlusion – so far apart that nothing else can cause it. For example, a particle that is close to its bound twin can emit radiation that affects the other. But if they are a kilometer apart and are measured at the same time, then they are only connected and blocked. Experimenters use equations called Bell’s inequality to solve all other descriptions of the properties associated with particles.
With small particles, the process of proving that there is no space is the same, but there is an additional possibility. These Balloins are the complexity of the standards and the mathematical holes that scientists have to jump through to prove a relationship that does not fit these three components. “You have to come up with a way to get there,” Bierhorst said — and have the technology to create the right conditions in the lab.
With results published in August, the team in Hefei, China, took a leap forward. First, by shooting lasers through a special type of crystal, they diffracted three photons and placed them in different parts of the research center, hundreds of meters apart. Then they measured the random factor for each photon. The researchers analyzed the measurements and found that the relationship between the particles was best described by three methods of quantum nonlocality. It was the most comprehensive demonstration of the absence of the three-way so far.
