Quantum physics you hold in your hand - forskning.no

Transistors used in electronic amplification, control and generation of electrical signals. (Photo: Colourbox.com)

Quantum physics is almost a hundred years old and consists of proven theories verified through mathematical formulas and actual observations.

device you’re reading this article would not exist without quantum physics.

– Semiconductors is a kvantefenomen, says particle physicist Bjørn Halvard Samset at CICERO. Samset has previously been associated with CERN in Switzerland through the University of Oslo.

– And that semiconductors manage power in the way they do form the basis for how we make transistors located in the heart of the IT revolution, he continued.

Quantum in mobile

Semiconductors stand out from regular conductors of electricity because they only conduct current in certain circumstances. Either an increase of temperature or by addition of particles of light or other elements called doping.

substances that may be used as semiconductors, such as silicon has four electrons in its outer shell. If one adds energy in the form of heat, light particles or doping, the four electrons could free themselves from the atom they are attached to and move freely in a lattice structure formed of such silicon atoms.

Below you can see how semiconductors in solar cells work.

These free electrons can carry current. And since you can manipulate half the managers’ ability to conduct electricity with external factors do they have a wealth of features used in modern technology.

knowledge of how electrons act is due to quantum physics.

Although the semiconductor was invented before quantum physics came on, it was only with the latter’s entry into that one could understand, and thus make better use of how electrons move through this lattice of atoms that make up semiconductors.

Samset comparing our relationship to quantum physics with how we relate to oil. We need not concern ourselves with how gasoline for your car come from, but you can see the oil in a somewhat broader perspective, we see how it affects both the climate and society.

When we understand how the building blocks work, we have a much greater chance to manipulate the fabric to do what we want. That’s when it starts to get exciting. And correspondingly difficult to comprehend.

Kvantetekryptering

One great example of one of the more extreme quantum physical experiments as a basis for technology that could end up in our living room – albeit not in the foreseeable future – is kvanteteleportering.

In September last year he European scientists, among them Norwegian, to kvanteteleportere one light particle over 140 kilometers. In practice this means that the transmitted one photon physical properties to another by simply changing one photon.

kvanteteleportasjons experiment the researchers transferred a photon properties from La Palma to Tenerife. Here we see the optical drive in Tenerife. (Photo: IQOQI Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

researchers managed it by using something called entanglement, a kvantefenomen that is about to form the basis for both kvanteteleportering, kvantekryptering and quantum computers.

Scientists experimenting with using this to send encrypted messages. When “message” teleport and not sent, so encryption will be impossible to listen to others. Kvantekryptering will be a sure way to send information.

theory basically is probability theory tells us that the quantum particles really can be everywhere at once.

Wobble Petter particles

The same applies to a particle characteristics. The particle can actually hold all possible properties until it is measured, only then determined which property it should possess.

This provides a kvantepartikkel properties in the future could revolutionize our computers. While computers today are based on 0ER and 1′s, where a bit of information can only be a 1 or 0 at a time, a kvantebit (called QBit) because of its nature be both 1:01, 1:00, or both simultaneously.

bear Samset (Photo: University of Oslo)

To explain the particles’ wobbling closer we can say that a particle is either red or green. It is impossible to know what color it is, before we look for. For us, this is quite obviously, but in quantum physics, it is not that simple. There are two possibilities. The most logical option is that it has one of the properties, we know it’s just not yourself, for we have not checked. The other possibility is slightly worse: The particle possesses both states simultaneously.

– John Steward Bell found out in the sixties that if you make any special double measurements, so you can see the differences in these two cases. And it was a physicist by the name of Alain Aspect did in the eighties, and he found out that it is likely interpretation of quantum physics as votes. That’s how nature behaves, explains Samset.

telepathic twins

And here comes entanglement theory into play. Two photons are prepared in a special way so that they are tangled as twin photons, holds each corresponding angle. In theory, both photons both an angle to the right and an angle to the left simultaneously, until they measured.

we will send these photons in opposite directions at the speed of light, they will be unable to communicate with each other according to the laws of physics, then this information must travel faster than the speed of light.

Albert Einstein called entanglement theory” spooky action at a distance “.

When we measure one photon, so that it is determined whether either the left or right, the second photon immediately opposite inclination.

– This one got the hiccups of Einstein, says Sams.

If you take one of the two entangled photons and fool around with it, the other at the same time recognize the effect of fuss and no act of changing into a kind of distorted version of its tvillingfoton.

To solve the distortion is the recipient of the distorted photon depends on a specific type of information from the sender, in short how the first photon appears after having been tampered with. Using this information, the receiver can decode the distorted tvillingfotonet, and lo and behold the photon kvanteteleportert.

Not Cancel your flight

Despite how fascinating and pioneering these efforts are, there is no reason to cancel the flight to Majorca yet. There are a whole bunch of assumptions that go in order to get this to work, even more before it can be used in technology and so are the physics on top of it all the way and ruining the fun with their strict rules.

although that part of the handover happens in a flash, do steps one must take in order to read the teleported properties that it is still impossible to send information faster than the speed of light.

In addition, one must use a third photon to tamper with the first. It transfers the physical properties of this third electron, which is then destroyed in the process, to the first. And then it suddenly less attractive to would lay kvanteteleportere.

Nevertheless, the experiment and theory behind the possibilities that open up when you move down to the smallest level of our knowledge. It is natural blow your mind when you read about how particles behave, but quantum physics is nevertheless more relevant to everyday life than most of us think.