New quantum research gives insights into how quantum light can be mastered
The breakthrough could have wide-reaching implications in quantum information, cryptography, and energy harvesting, according to a new study
2021-07-21
(Press-News.org) Los Alamos, N.M., July 21, 2021--A team of scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory propose that modulated quantum metasurfaces can control all properties of photonic qubits, a breakthrough that could impact the fields of quantum information, communications, sensing and imaging, as well as energy and momentum harvesting. The results of their study were released yesterday in the journal Physical Review Letters, published by the American Physical Society.
"People have studied classical metasurfaces for a long time," says Diego Dalvit, who works in the Condensed Matter and Complex Systems group at the Laboratory's Theoretical Division. "But we came up with this new idea, which was to modulate in time and space the optical properties of a quantum metasurface that allow us to manipulate, on-demand, all degrees of freedom of a single photon, which is the most elementary unit of light."
Metasurfaces are ultrathin structures that can manipulate light in ways not usually seen in nature. In this case, the team developed a metasurface that looked like an array of rotated crosses, which they can then manipulate with lasers or electrical pulses. They then proposed to shoot a single photon through the metasurface, where the photon splits into a superposition of many colors, paths, and spinning states that are all intertwined, generating so-called quantum entanglement--meaning the single photon is capable of inheriting all these different properties at once.
"When the metasurface is modulated with laser or electrical pulses, one can control the frequency of the refracted single photon, alter its angle of trajectory, the direction of its electric field, as well as its twist," says Abul Azad from the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies at the Laboratory's Materials Physics and Applications Division.
By manipulating these properties, this technology could be used to encode information in photons traveling within a quantum network, everything from banks, quantum computers, and between Earth and satellites. Encoding photons is particularly desirable in the field of cryptography because "eavesdroppers" are unable to view a photon without changing its fundamental physics, which if done would then alert the sender and receiver that the information has been compromised.
The researchers are also working on how to pull photons from a vacuum by modulating the quantum metasurface.
"The quantum vacuum is not empty but full of fleeting virtual photons. With the modulated quantum metasurface one is able to efficiently extract and convert virtual photons into real photon pairs," says Wilton Kort-Kamp, who works in the Theoretical Division at the Lab's Condensed Matter and Complex Systems group.
Harnessing photons that exist in the vacuum and shooting them in one direction should create propulsion in the opposite direction. Similarly, stirring the vacuum should create rotational motion from the twisted photons. Structured quantum light could then one day be used to generate mechanical thrust, using only tiny amounts of energy to drive the metasurface.
INFORMATION:
The paper: Wilton J.?M. Kort-Kamp, Abul K. Azad, and Diego A.?R. Dalvit. Space-Time Quantum Metasurfaces. Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 043603. Published 20 July 2021.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.043603
Funding: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Los Alamos National Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD)
About Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.
LA-UR-21-27013
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-07-21
Northwestern University researchers have developed a new framework using machine learning that improves the accuracy of interatomic potentials -- the guiding rules describing how atoms interact -- in new materials design. The findings could lead to more accurate predictions of how new materials transfer heat, deform, and fail at the atomic scale.
Designing new nanomaterials is an important aspect of developing next-generation devices used in electronics, sensors, energy harvesting and storage, optical detectors, and structural materials. To design these materials, researchers create interatomic potentials through atomistic modeling, a computational approach that predicts how these materials behave by accounting for their ...
2021-07-21
In a recently published paper, a research team, led by University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Professor Emeritus Joseph M. Prospero, chronicles the history of African dust transport, including three independent "first" discoveries of African dust in the Caribbean Basin in the 1950s and 1960s.
Every year, mineral-rich dust from North Africa's Sahara Desert is lifted into the atmosphere by winds and carried on a 5,000-mile journey across the North Atlantic to the Americas. African dust contains iron, phosphorus and other important nutrients that are essential for life in marine and terrestrial ...
2021-07-21
BROOKLYN, New York, Weekday, Month xx, 2021 - The remarkable structural properties of the Venus' flower basket sponge (E. aspergillum) might seem fathoms removed from human-engineered structures. However, insights into how the organism's latticework of holes and ridges influences the hydrodynamics of seawater in its vicinity could lead to advanced designs for buildings, bridges, marine vehicles and aircraft, and anything that must respond safely to forces imposed by the flow of air or water.
While past research has investigated the structure of the sponge, there have been few studies of the hydrodynamic fields surrounding and penetrating the organism, and whether, besides improving its mechanical ...
2021-07-21
BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - This week, at the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 21), researchers at the END ...
2021-07-21
Efforts to understand cardiac disease progression and develop therapeutic tissues that can repair the human heart are just a few areas of focus for the Feinberg research group at Carnegie Mellon University. The group's latest dynamic model, created in partnership with collaborators in the Netherlands, mimics physiologic loads on engineering heart muscle tissues, yielding an unprecedented view of how genetics and mechanical forces contribute to heart muscle function.
"Our lab has been working for a long time on engineering and building human heart muscle tissue, so we can better ...
2021-07-21
UT Southwestern researchers have identified an immune protein tied to the rare neurodegenerative condition known as Niemann-Pick disease type C. The END ...
2021-07-21
For more than 30 years, scientists on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have focused on human-induced climate change. Their fifth assessment report led to the Paris Agreement in 2015 and, shortly after, a special report on the danger of global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Nobel Prize-winning team stressed that mitigating global warming "would make it markedly easier to achieve many aspects of sustainable development, with greater potential to eradicate poverty and reduce inequalities."
In a first-of-its-kind study that combines assessments of the risks of toxic emissions (e.g., fine particulate matter), ...
2021-07-21
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Exoskeletons - wearable devices used by workers on assembly lines or in warehouses to alleviate stress on their lower backs - may compete with valuable resources in the brain while people work, canceling out the physical benefits of wearing them, a new study suggests.
The study, published recently in the journal Applied Ergonomics, found that when people wore exoskeletons while performing tasks that required them to think about their actions, their brains worked overtime and their bodies competed with the exoskeletons rather than working in harmony with them. The study indicates that exoskeletons may place enough burden on the brain that potential benefits to the body are negated.
"It's almost like dancing with a really bad partner," said ...
2021-07-21
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A new approach to treating breast cancer kills 95-100% of cancer cells in mouse models of human estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancers and their metastases in bone, brain, liver and lungs. The newly developed drug, called ErSO, quickly shrinks even large tumors to undetectable levels.
Led by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the research team reports the findings in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
"Even when a few breast cancer cells do survive, enabling tumors to regrow over several months, the tumors that regrow remain completely ...
2021-07-21
Unlike the rest of the body, there is not enough real estate in the brain for stored energy. Instead, the brain relies on the hundreds of miles of blood vessels within it to supply fresh energy via the blood. Yet, how the brain expresses a need for more energy during increased activity and then directs its blood supply to specific hot spots was, until now, poorly understood.
Now, University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Vermont researchers have shown how the brain communicates to blood vessels when in need of energy, and how these blood vessels respond by relaxing or constricting to direct blood flow to specific brain regions.
In their new paper, published on July 21 in Science Advances, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] New quantum research gives insights into how quantum light can be mastered
The breakthrough could have wide-reaching implications in quantum information, cryptography, and energy harvesting, according to a new study
