Madrid 2 (Europe Press)
The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, together with colleagues from the US, Israel and Austria, have developed a theory that describes a new state of light, with quantum properties that can be controlled over a wide range of frequencies, up to frequencies as high as their findings are published in the journal Nature Physics.
The world we observe around us can be described according to the laws of classical physics, but as soon as we look at things on an atomic scale, the strange world of quantum physics begins. Imagine a basketball: the ball behaves to the naked eye according to the laws of classical physics. But the atoms that make it up behave according to quantum physics.
“Light is no exception: from sunlight to radio waves, it can most of the time be described by classical physics,” explains Dr. Andrea Pizzi, lead author of the study and resident at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. “But at the micro and nanoscales, so-called quantum fluctuations start to play a role, and classical physics can’t explain them.”
Pizzi, who actually works in the University of Harvard, collaborates with the group of Ido Kaminer of the Instituto Tecnológico of Technion-Israel and the collegas of MIT and the Universidad of Viena for disarroller and teoría that predice una nueva forma de control ar la naturaleza cuántica de the light.
“Quantum fluctuations make studying quantum light more difficult, but they are also more interesting: if manipulated correctly, quantum fluctuations can be a source,” says Bezey. “Quantum state control of light could enable new microscopy techniques and quantum computing.”
Powerful lasers use one of the main technologies to generate light. When a powerful enough laser is directed at a group of emitters, it can rip some electrons from the emitters and activate them. Over time, some of these electrons recombine with the emitters from which they were drawn, and the excess energy they absorb is released as light. This process converts low-frequency input light into high-frequency output radiation.
“It has been hypothesized that all these emitters are independent of each other, resulting in an output light in which quantum fluctuations are devoid of characteristic features,” explains Bezey. “We wanted to study a system in which the emitters were not independent, but rather correlated: the state of one particle tells you something about the state of the other. In this case, the resulting light begins to behave very differently, and its quantum fluctuations become highly ordered, perhaps even more useful.”
To solve this type of problem, known as the many-body problem, the researchers used a combination of theoretical analysis and computer simulations, in which the light output from a set of linked emitters can be described using quantum physics.
