The experiment was done by combining a millimetre-sized drum with a large cloud of atoms
Humans tend to be preoccupied with their own lives and usually won’t give a second thought to anything else, despite knowing in the back of our minds that the world we live in is filled with uncertainties.
However, physicists have proved with an experiment that even the macroscopic world that we live in can be affected by the laws of quantum physics. They proved this by successfully entangling a millimetre-sized drum with a large cloud of atoms.
The entanglement system
The experiment was conducted by researchers at the Neils Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen by using a 13 nanometre-thick, millimetres-long silicon nitride membrane (or drum) that buzzed lightly when struck with photons (particles of light). The photons came as a result of a thin fog created from a billion caesium atoms spinning inside the confines of a small, cold cell.
Even though these two objects were very different from each other, they were able to create an entangled system and pushed the limits of quantum mechanics.
Senior researcher Eugene Polzik said, “The bigger the objects, the further apart they are, the more disparate they are, the more interesting entanglement becomes from both fundamental and applied perspectives. With the new result, entanglement between very different objects has become possible.”
This will now lead quantum physics to new fields of innovation, from super strong encryption to new kinds of radar. Quantum physicist Michal Parniak from the Niels Bohr Institute calls it a double edged sword, saying, “It gives us wonderful new technologies, but also limits precision of measurements which would seem just easy from a classical point of view.”
The research has been published in Nature.
(Cover: Niels Bohr Institute)