Supercomputers Help Link Quantum Entanglement to Cold Coffee
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Supercomputers help link quantum entanglement to cold coffee:
Theoretical physicists from Trinity College Dublin have found a deep link between one of the most striking features of quantum mechanics -- quantum entanglement -- and thermalisation, which is the process in which something comes into thermal equilibrium with its surroundings.
Their results are published today [Friday 31st January 2020] in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.
We are all familiar with thermalisation -- just think how your coffee reaches room temperature over time. Quantum entanglement on the other hand is a different story.
Yet work performed by Marlon Brenes, PhD Candidate, and Professor John Goold from Trinity, in collaboration with Silvia Pappalardi and Professor Alessandro Silva at SISSA in Italy, shows how the two are inextricably linked.
Explaining the importance of the discovery, Professor Goold, leader of Trinity's QuSys group, explains:
"Quantum entanglement is a counterintuitive feature of quantum mechanics, which allows particles that have interacted with each other at some point in time to become correlated in a way which is not possible classically. Measurements on one particle affect the outcomes of measurements of the other -- even if they are light years apart. Einstein called this effect 'spooky action at a distance'."
"It turns out that entanglement is not just spooky but actually ubiquitous and in fact what is even more amazing is that we live in an age where technology is starting to exploit this feature to perform feats which were thought to be impossible just a number of years go. These quantum technologies are being developed rapidly in the private sector with companies such as Google and IBM leading the race."
But what has all this got to do with cold coffee?
Journal Reference:
Marlon Brenes, Silvia Pappalardi, John Goold, Alessandro Silva Multipartite Entanglement Structure in the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis, Physical Review Letters (DOI: doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.040605)
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