New QUANTUM device appears to defy the laws of time
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Loading... - Ava Candace
- 24 Aug 2021
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The order of events, that we take for granted, doesn't appear to exist in the same way on the quantum plane.
Scientists at University of Queensland in Australia have created a quantum device which can meddle with the sequence of two events so they both take place at the same time.
The device, known as a quantum switch, is able to let light pass through two routes, in two different times, simultaneously.
This could be useful in quantum computers and quantum communications.
The results mark "the first steps toward controlling a new regime of quantum physics," says physicist Giulio Chiribella of the University of Oxford and the University of Hong Kong, who was not involved with the experiment.
The quantum switch works by putting photons of light through two paths to carry out two operations dubbed A and B. Along one path, A happens before B and along another, B happens before A.
The path taken is determined by the electromagnetic wave type the light takes - horizontal polarisation or vertical.
Due to quantum superposition, the light can be both horizontally and vertically polarised at once. All that means is it can experience both A before B and B before A, according to the experiment's results.
Quantum communication could be hugely affected by this since scrambled information can be salvaged using this technique.
If you were to use a bad phone line to make a call and then used that same mixed up sound down another poor phone line, the result would be indecipherable.
Thanks to quantum superposition, using a quantum switch, some information - in the form of light at least - can be extracted.
