Seeing quantum entanglement and using quantum entanglement to build a wormhole

Kudos to the team from the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology for the great musical accompaniment on their video showing quantum entanglement in real time,

A Dec. 4, 2013 news item on Nanowerk provides more details,

Einstein called quantum entanglement “spooky action at a distance”. Now, a team from the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology has reported imaging of entanglement events where the influence of the measurement of one particle on its distant partner particle is directly visible (“Real-Time Imaging of Quantum Entanglement”).

The Dec. 4, 2013 Andor news release, which originated the news item, gives more details about the team’s work and about the Andor camera which enabled it,

The key to their success is the Andor iStar 334T Intensified CCD (ICCD) camera, which is capable of very fast (nanosecond) and precise (picosecond) optical gating speeds. Unlike the relatively long microsecond exposure times of CCD and EMCCD cameras which inhibits their usefulness in ultra-high-speed imaging, this supreme level of temporal resolution made it possible for the team to perform a real-time coincidence imaging of entanglement for the first time.

“The Andor iStar ICCD camera is fast enough, and sensitive enough, to image in real-time the effect of the measurement of one photon on its entangled partner,” says Robert Fickler of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information. “Using ICCD cameras to evaluate the number of photons from a registered intensity within a given region opens up new experimental possibilities to determine more efficiently the structure and properties of spatial modes from only single intensity images. Our results suggest that triggered ICCD cameras will advance quantum optics and quantum information experiments where complex structures of single photons need to be investigated with high spatio-temporal resolution.”

According to Antoine Varagnat, Product Specialist at Andor, “The experiment produces pairs of photons which are entangled so as to have opposite polarisations. For instance, if one of a pair has horizontal polarisation, the other has vertical, and so on. The first photon is sent to polarising glass that transmits photons of one angle only, followed by a detector to register photons which make it through the glass. The other photon is delayed by a fibre, then its entangled property is coherently transferred from the polarisation to the spatial mode and afterwards brought to the high-speed, ultra-sensitive iStar camera.

“The use of the ICCD camera allowed the team to demonstrate the high flexibility of the setup in creating any desired spatial-mode entanglement. Their results suggest that visual imaging in quantum optics not only provides a better intuitive understanding of entanglement but will also improve applications of quantum science,” concludes Varagnat.

Research into quantum entanglement was instigated in 1935 by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, in a paper critiquing quantum mechanics. Erwin Schrödinger also wrote several papers shortly afterwards. Although these first studies focused on the counterintuitive properties of entanglement with the aim of criticising quantum mechanics, entanglement was eventually verified experimentally and recognised as a valid, fundamental feature of quantum mechanics. Nowadays, the focus of the research has changed to its utilization in communications and computation, and has been used to realise quantum teleportation experimentally.

The team’s work is chronicled in this study,

Real-Time Imaging of Quantum Entanglement by Robert Fickler, Mario Krenn, Radek Lapkiewicz, Sven Ramelow & Anton Zeilinger. Scientific Reports 3, Article number: 1914 doi:10.1038/srep01914 Published 29 May 2013

This is an open access paper.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Washington (Seattle, Washington state) explore the quantum entanglement phenomenon with an eye to wormholes (from the De.c 3, 2013 University of Washington news release [also on EurekAlter]),

Quantum entanglement, a perplexing phenomenon of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein once referred to as “spooky action at a distance,” could be even spookier than Einstein perceived.

Physicists at the University of Washington and Stony Brook University in New York believe the phenomenon might be intrinsically linked with wormholes, hypothetical features of space-time that in popular science fiction can provide a much-faster-than-light shortcut from one part of the universe to another.

But here’s the catch: One couldn’t actually travel, or even communicate, through these wormholes, said Andreas Karch, a UW physics professor.

Quantum entanglement occurs when a pair or a group of particles interact in ways that dictate that each particle’s behavior is relative to the behavior of the others. In a pair of entangled particles, if one particle is observed to have a specific spin, for example, the other particle observed at the same time will have the opposite spin.

The “spooky” part is that, as research has confirmed, the relationship holds true no matter how far apart the particles are – across the room or across several galaxies. If the behavior of one particle changes, the behavior of both entangled particles changes simultaneously, no matter how far away they are.

Recent research indicated that the characteristics of a wormhole are the same as if two black holes were entangled, then pulled apart. Even if the black holes were on opposite sides of the universe, the wormhole would connect them.

Black holes, which can be as small as a single atom or many times larger than the sun, exist throughout the universe, but their gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape from them.

If two black holes were entangled, Karch said, a person outside the opening of one would not be able to see or communicate with someone just outside the opening of the other.

“The way you can communicate with each other is if you jump into your black hole, then the other person must jump into his black hole, and the interior world would be the same,” he said.

The work demonstrates an equivalence between quantum mechanics, which deals with physical phenomena at very tiny scales, and classical geometry – “two different mathematical machineries to go after the same physical process,” Karch said. The result is a tool scientists can use to develop broader understanding of entangled quantum systems.

“We’ve just followed well-established rules people have known for 15 years and asked ourselves, ‘What is the consequence of quantum entanglement?'”

The researchers have provided an illustration, which looks more like a ‘smiley face’ to me. Are wormholes smiley faces in space,

Alan Stonebraker/American Physical Society This illustration demonstrates a wormhole connecting two black holes.

Alan Stonebraker/American Physical Society
This illustration demonstrates a wormhole connecting two black holes.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the research paper on quantum entanglement and wormholes,

Holographic Dual of an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Pair has a Wormhole by Kristan Jensen and Andreas Karch. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 211602 (2013) [5 pages] Published 20 November 2013

This paper is behind a paywall.

ETA Dec. 11, 2013: There’s a news item today, Dec. 11, 2013, on Nanowerk which casts an interesting light on Andor,

Nanotechnology specialist Oxford Instruments is to take over Belfast-based scientific camera maker Andor in a £176million deal.
The Andor board last night agreed a 525p a share offer, giving a 31 per cent premium over the closing price before Oxford’s initial 500p a share pitch in November.

The two companies have been in talks since July [2013].

Shares in Andor rose 10p to 515p and Oxford Instruments gained 8p to 1566p.

It looks like their Dec. 4, 2013 news release was a leadup to this business news.

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