Understanding Quantum Mechanics #3: Non-locality
Locality means that to get from one point to another you somehow have to make a connection in space between these points. You cannot suddenly disappear and reappear elsewhere. At least that was Einstein’s idea. In quantum mechanics it’s more difficult. Just exactly how quantum mechanics is and is not local, that’s what I explain in this video.
Quantum Physics Explained!
What is quantum physics? Why should we care about knowing what is quantum physics? Do we NEED to know what quantum physics is? How does quantum physics affects our daily lives? These questions, and many more, come to mind when one thinks of quantum physics. Which questions should we try to answer first? We will first settle the issue of know what we are talking about: quantum physics. Understanding the story of the birth of quantum physics will help us understand what quantum physics is.
Quantum physics is the physics of the microscopic world; the world of molecules, atoms, and sub-atomic particles. It is a branch of physics that was born in the early decades of the twentieth century, with its seeds germinating in the late decades of the nineteenth century. Quantum physics was born out of a mixture of failure to understand certain experiments, and also out of non-sense results when applying classical physics to atoms. Yes, physicists were already familiar with the notion that matter is composed of microscopic packets, the atoms. This notion was initially put forth by the Greek philosopher Democritus who postulated that everything is built from atoms and the void. Later on, chemists starting in the eighteenth century with English chemist John Dalton, and after carefully studying chemical reactions and the proportions of reagents that go in and the proportions of the resultant chemicals, correctly inferred that matter is built of individual packets, which he called atoms! Dmitri Mandeleev in the nineteenth century classified atoms by their chemical properties and arranged them into the periodic table of elements that we are familiar with today. We will see as go on with our story that the chemical properties of atoms are a direct consequence of quantum physics!
Continue reading “Quantum Physics Explained!”‘Hot’ Qubits Crack a Major Quantum Computing Challenge
Researchers might have broken one of the biggest obstacles to practical quantum computers with something called ‘hot’ qubits.
As many of you already know, the quantum computer is built around the quantum bit, or qubit. The colder and more isolated the qubit is, the less likely it is to flip to another quantum state when it’s not supposed to. But well-isolated qubits are also difficult to keep cold, and the more qubits a computer has, the more heat the system generates, and so we have to figure out how to keep these large quantum computers operating at an optimal temperature either by improving the cooling systems or by creating qubits that can operate at warmer temperatures. This is where researchers believe they have made a major breakthrough by using quantum dots embedded in silicon rather than basing their qubits off superconductors. This approach allows the qubits to operate at hotter temperatures…like 1.5 kelvin hot. That’s 15 times hotter than the main competing chip-based technology being developed by Google, IBM, and others.
Nanotechnology: A New Frontier
Nanotechnology is ironically becoming larger by the day, but not literally. As a field, Nanotechnology impacts each and every one of us more every single day. What is Nanotechnology? Why should you care about it? Well, I have a few reasons.
Understanding Quantum Mechanics #2: Superposition and Entanglement
If you know one thing about quantum mechanics, it’s that Schrodinger’s cat is both dead and alive. This is what physicists call a “superposition”. But what does this really mean? And what does it have to do with entanglement? This video explains it.
What is the universe really made of? Quantum Field Theory visualized
What is the universe really made of? What is truly fundamental in the reality that we perceive? This video is about QFT: Quantum field theory – simplified.
Everything that you see is thought to be made of up of particles. This is what most people are taught in science class. The only problem is it is not true. And physicists have known this for decades. Particles are really not fundamental. The best theory in physics tells us that there really are no particles at all, only fields. Particles are merely waves in the field. Fields are fluid-like substances that can be perturbed, vibrate, and experience excitations. What exactly are fields?
Continue reading “What is the universe really made of? Quantum Field Theory visualized”Quantum Physics for Dummies (A Quick Crash Course!)
The Future of Quantum Computing Could Live on a Cryogenic Chip
It seems like quantum computers will likely be a big part of our computing future—but getting them to do anything super useful has been famously difficult. Lots of new technologies are aiming to get commercially viable quantum computing here just a little bit faster, including one innovation that shrinks quantum technology down onto a chip. Enter: the cryogenic chip. But first, a quick refresher on how quantum computing works. Unlike a classical bit, a quantum computer uses quantum bits, or qubits, to make calculations. These qubits have the potential to be super powerful, providing quantum computers with the potential to run really complex calculations exponentially faster than classical computers. But qubits are also really, really hard to both make and control. Today, quantum computers have less than 100 qubits, but in order to tackle problems we want answers to, we will need to scale up to million-qubit systems. That means that we will need a more sustainable way to control the behavior of qubits. One solution? A cryogenic computer chip. Intel just debuted a chip its calling Horse Ridge, a technology that takes the electronics needed to control the qubits, and puts them on a chip that’s capable of functioning at about 4 Kelvin, so they can live inside the cryogenic chamber with the qubits. But how does this cryogenic chip work, how realistic of a solution is it really, and what could it mean for the future of quantum computing?
How To Make a Quantum Bit
We have looked at how a transistor works, the fundamental unit of classical computers, and how a quantum computer works in theory, taking advantage of quantum superposition to hold exponentially more information than classical computers. Now we look at the practical side of making a quantum bit, or qubit. How do you put it in a state where it is stable? How do you read and write information on it? These processes are described for a solid-state qubit – a phosphorous atom in a silicon crystal substrate. Both the electron and the nucleus of the phosphorous atom can be used as qubits.