Tag Archives: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Space-time and the quantum internet

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Curved space-time intertwining with quantum theory? It’s a bit (huge!) of a stretch for me given my lack of knowledge but here goes, from a July 21, 2025 Stevens Institute of Technology news release, also on EurekAlert but published July 14, 2025, Note: Links have been removed,

Quantum networking is being rapidly developed world-wide. It is a key quantum technology that will enable a global quantum internet: the ability to deploy secure communication at scale, and to connect quantum computers globally. The race to realize this vision is in full swing, both on Earth and in space. 

Now, a new research result, developed in a collaboration between Igor Pikovski at Stevens Institute of Technology, Jacob Covey at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Johannes Borregaard at Harvard University, suggests that quantum networks are more versatile than previously thought. In the paper titled Probing Curved Spacetime with a Distributed Atomic Processor Clock, just published in the journal PRX Quantum, the researchers show that this technology can probe how curved space-time affects quantum theory — a first test of this kind.    

Quantum physics has passed every test with flying colors so far. But how it behaves when Einstein’s theory of gravity —general relativity — comes into the picture is less clear. In Einstein’s theory, gravity is no longer a force, but a result of changing space and time — curved space-time. This leads to unique effects, such as the slowing of time near planets. The phenomenon has been measured, and confirmed, to very high accuracy, as well as popularized in science-fiction films and novels like Interstellar. But how does this changing flow of time affect quantum mechanics? Could quantum theory or general relativity, or both, require modification where they intertwine? While a full theory of quantum gravity remains lacking, there are suggestions that quantum principles might change in the presence of curved spacetime. However, probing this frontier was so far impossible in experiments.

In a previous study titled Testing Quantum Theory on Curved Spacetime with Quantum Networks that appeared on May 27 [2025] in Physical Review Research, Pikovski and Borregaard have shown that the time is ripe for experiments to explore these questions, using quantum networks. They showed how two unique, but distinct features of quantum theory and gravity come into play simultaneously. In quantum theory, there exist superpositions: matter can exist not only in specific definite states, but also in mixtures of them at the same time. Quantum computing exploits this fact to build qubits —superpositions of bits of 0 and 1. Then, quantum networks can spread such qubits across large distances. But in the vicinity of Earth, these qubits would also be affected by curved space-time because the flow of time itself changes. The researchers showed that superpositions of atomic clocks in quantum networks would pick up different time-flows in superposition, and that this opens the door to probe how quantum theory and curved space-time intertwine.

“The interplay between quantum theory and gravity is one of the most challenging problems in physics today, but also fascinating,” says Igor Pikovski, Geoffrey S. Inman Junior Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, and one of the authors. “Quantum networks will help us test this interplay for the first time in actual experiments.” 

Teaming up with Covey’s lab, Pikovski and Borregaard then developed a concrete protocol. The team showed how quantum effects can be distributed across network nodes using so-called entangled W-states, and how interference between these entangled systems is recorded.  By exploiting modern quantum capabilities, such as quantum teleportation (transferring the quantum state of a particle to another particle) and entangled Bell-pairs (maximally entangled states of two qubits) in atom arrays, a test of quantum theory on curved space-time can be achieved.

“We assume that quantum theory holds everywhere — but we really don’t know if this is true,” says Pikovski. “It might be that gravity changes how quantum mechanics works. In fact, some theories suggest such modifications, and quantum technology will be able to test that.” 

The results of Pikovski, Covey and Borregaard demonstrate that quantum networks are not only a useful practical tool for a future quantum internet, but that they also provide unique opportunities for the study of fundamental physics that cannot be achieved with classical sensing. At the very least, a test of how quantum mechanics behaves on curved space-time is now possible.

About Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens is a premier, private research university situated in Hoboken, New Jersey. Since our founding in 1870, technological innovation has been the hallmark of Stevens’ education and research. Within the university’s three schools and one college, more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate closely with faculty in an interdisciplinary, student-centric, entrepreneurial environment. Academic and research programs spanning business, computing, engineering, the arts and other disciplines actively advance the frontiers of science and leverage technology to confront our most pressing global challenges. The university continues to be consistently ranked among the nation’s leaders in career services, post-graduation salaries of alumni and return on tuition investment.

I have links to and citations for both papers mentioned in the news release.

First, the May 2025 paper, here’s the link to and citation,

Testing Quantum Theory on Curved Spacetime with Quantum Networks by Johannes Borregaard and Igor Pikovski. Phys. Rev. Research 7, 023192 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.7.023192 Published 27 May, 2025

This paper appears to be open access.

Now for the July 2025 paper,

Probing Curved Spacetime with a Distributed Atomic Processor Clock by Jacob P. Covey, Igor Pikovski, Johannes Borregaard. PRX Quantum 6, 030310 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/q188-b1cr Published 21 July, 2025

This paper, too, appears to be open access.

Year of Quantum Across Canada Conference October 6 – 9, 2025, Waterloo, Ontario (call for submissions deadline: Sept. 19, 2025)

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A September 9, 2025 Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) notice (received via email) announces a quantum conference and call for posters,

Join leading quantum researchers at the Year of Quantum Across Canada Conference that will highlight advances in quantum information theory and applications. The conference is co-hosted by the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics from October 6 to 9, 2025.

  • Learn about and share the latest advances in quantum information theory and applications.
  • Find opportunities to collaborate with local, Canadian and international quantum researchers.
  • Celebrate 100 years since the initial development of quantum mechanics this International Year of Quantum.

IQC and Perimeter Institute invite all scientists who are interested in:

  • Quantum metrology
  • Quantum simulation and quantum advantage
  • Quantum error-correction and fault tolerance
  • Quantum complexity and algorithms
  • Quantum communication and networks
  • Quantum cryptography
  • Quantum information in quantum matter and quantum gravity

Register Today

Registration Deadlines: 

  • In-Person: September 22 [2025] at 23:59 ET
  • Virtual: October 6 [2025] at 23:59 ET

We are hosting a poster session on Tuesday, October 7 [2025]. Abstract submission deadline is September 19 [2025] at 23:59 ET.

Please forward this email to your colleagues who would be interested in attending. Questions can be directed to mail to: iqc.events@uwaterloo.ca

I have more information about the call for poster submissions, from the Year of Quantum Across Canada’s Call for Abstracts webpage,

Submission deadline: Sep[t] 19, 2025, 11:59 PM [ET]

The Year of Quantum Across Canada Symposium will be hosting a poster session on Tuesday, Oct 7th [2025] at IQC. Poster submissions are welcome and will be reviewed by the program committee. Some posters may be selected to present as a contributed talk. If you are interested in your poster being considered for a talk, please indicate this on the submission form.

NOTE: You must be in attendance at the Symposium in Waterloo to present a poster and/or contributed talk. We encourage you to register for the Symposium as soon as possible as space is limited. You will be advised if your poster has been accepted before the registration fee payment deadline.

If you have questions about the Call for Abstracts with respect to your research, please contact Alex May (amay@perimeterinstitute.ca).

Any logistical questions about the application process, the website or decision timelines should be directed to conferences@perimeterinstitute.ca

Then, there’s this from the Year of Quantum Across Canada’s Speaker List webpage, Note: Two confirmed speakers from Canada to “celebrate and aim to strengthen the quantum information science community in Canada and beyond, by bringing together leading Canadian researchers as well as members of the broader quantum community” as per the conference homepage. Maybe they’ll get a few more before October 2025?,

Speaker List

Confirmed Speakers:

Christian Bauer (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
Alexandre Blais (Université de Sherbrooke)
Sergey Bravyi (IBM Research – Thomas J. Watson Research Center)
Nikolas Breuckmann (University of Bristol)
Soonwon Choi (MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology])
Zohreh Davoudi (University of Maryland)
Matthew Fisher (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Dakshita Khurana (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Aleksander Kubica (Yale University)
Hank Lamm (Fermilab)
Laura Mancinska (University of Copenhagen)
Antonio Mezzacapo (IBM)
John Preskill (Caltech)
Martin Savage (University of Washington)
Brian Swingle (Brandeis University)
Nathan Wiebe (University of Toronto)
Yu-Xiang Yang (The University of Hong Kong)

Moving on, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) took a slightly more celebratory approach to their launch of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025 (IYQ 2025) in February 2025 (see my January 31, 2025 posting).

You can find the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025 (IYQ 2025) website here. It provides information about a plethora of quantum events in countries around the world along with this video embedded here too,

Happy International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025 (YQ 2025)!

Fido’s osteosarcoma and nanoparticle drug delivery

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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have started testing nanoparticle drug delivery for bone tumours in dogs. From a July 25, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily,

At the University of Illinois, an engineer teamed up with a veterinarian to test a bone cancer drug delivery system in animals bigger than the standard animal model, the mouse. They chose dogs — mammals closer in size and biology to humans — with naturally occurring bone cancers, which also are a lot like human bone tumors.

A July 25, 2016 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign news release (also on EurekAlert) by Diana Yates, which originated the news item, provides more detail about the research,

In clinical trials, the dogs tolerated the highest planned doses of cancer-drug-laden nanoparticles with no signs of toxicity. As in mice, the particles homed in on tumor sites, thanks to a coating of the drug pamidronate, which preferentially binds to degraded sites in bone. The nanoparticles also showed anti-cancer activity in mice and dogs.

…

These findings are a proof-of-concept that nanoparticles can be used to target bone cancers in large mammals, the researchers said. The approach may one day be used to treat metastatic skeletal cancers, they said.

The dogs were companion animals with bone cancer that were submitted for the research trials by their owners, said U. of I. veterinary clinical medicine professor Dr. Timothy Fan, who led the study with materials science and engineering professor Jianjun Cheng. All of the dogs were 40 to 60 kilograms (88 to 132 pounds) in weight, he said.

“We wanted to see if we could evaluate these drug-delivery strategies, not only in a mouse model, but also at a scale that would mimic what a person would get,” Fan said. “The amount of nanoparticle that we ended up giving to these dogs was a thousand-fold greater in quantity than what we would typically give a mouse.” Fan is a faculty member of the Anticancer Discovery from Pets to People research theme at the IGB [Institute for Genomic Biology).

Using nanoparticles with payloads of drugs to target specific tissues in the body is nothing new, Cheng said. Countless studies test such approaches in mice, and dozens of “nanopharmaceuticals” are approved for use in humans. But the drug-development pipeline is long, and the leap from mouse models to humans is problematic, he said.

“Human bone tumors are much bigger than those of mice,” Cheng, an affiliate of the IGB’s Regenerative Biology & Tissue Engineering theme, said. “Nanoparticles must penetrate more deeply into larger tumors to be effective. That is why we must find animal models that are closer in scale to those of humans.”

Mice used in cancer research have other limitations. Researchers usually inject human or other tumor cells into their bodies to mimic human cancers, Fan said. They also are bred to have compromised immune systems, to prevent them from rejecting the tumors.

“That is one of the very clear drawbacks of using a mouse model,” Fan said. “it doesn’t recapitulate the normal immune system that we deal with every day in the person or in a dog.”

There also are limitations to working with dogs, he said. Dogs diagnosed with bone cancer often arrive at the clinic at a very advanced stage of the disease, whereas in humans, bone cancer is usually detected early because people complain about the pain and have it investigated.

“On the flip side of that, I would say that if you are able to demonstrate anti-cancer activity in a dog with very advanced disease, then it would be likely that you would have equivalent or better activity in people with a less advanced stage of the disease,” Fan said.

Many more years of work remain before this or a similar drug-delivery system can be tested in humans with inoperable bone cancer, the researchers said.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Pamidronate functionalized nanoconjugates for targeted therapy of focal skeletal malignant osteolysis by Qian Yin, Li Tang, Kaimin Cai, Rong Tong, Rachel Sternberg, Xujuan Yang, Lawrence W. Dobrucki, Luke B. Borst, Debra Kamstock, Ziyuan Song, William G. Helferich, Jianjun Cheng, and Timothy M. Fan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2016 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1603316113

This paper is behind a paywall.

Beginner’s guide to gold nanoparticles in an Academic Minute

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Catherine J Murphy, professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), contributed to Inside Higher Education’s Academic Minute audio podcast series according to an April 9, 2015 news item on the organization’s website.

Murphy provides a very good beginner’s description of gold nanoparticles.

Inside Higher Education offers a transcript of the ‘minute’ by Matthew on its Academic Minute website’s Catherine Murphy webpage,

Introduction: Atomic element #79 is the precious metal more commonly known as gold.

…

Transcript: Nanotechnology is the study of matter on the 1-100 nanometer scale – about ten to a thousand atoms across. Many elements in the periodic table are metals, and chemists like me are figuring out ways to create tiny metal nanoparticles of different shapes and sizes – spheres, cylinders, stars, you name it. We focus on gold. The cool thing is that each shape and size of gold nanoparticle absorbs and scatters light at different wavelengths, so each size and shape has a different color. So all the colors of the rainbow, and then some, are possible with gold nanoparticles.

The reasons for these neat colors go back to understanding the fundamental nature of light. We know from Maxwell’s equations that light is an electromagnetic wave. If light impinges on a “small conducting sphere,” then there are conditions under which certain wavelengths of light lead to huge oscillations in the electron cloud around the metal, for any metal in the periodic table, as a function of the size of the sphere, the dielectric constant of the metal, and the refractive index of the medium. These equations were worked out by Gustav Mie in the early 1900’s and give us a fundamental understanding of where these brilliant colors come from. In the last 30 years, scientists have adapted his equation for all kinds of shapes beyond spheres.

But gold nanoparticles are not just pretty to look at: they can do a lot of interesting things. For instance, these gold nanoparticles also scatter light, making them easy to find in a simple optical microscope; and since gold is environmentally benign compared to other metals, people are using gold nanoparticles to image biological systems. When you shine light on gold, the absorption of light is very strong at the right wavelengths. Once the particles have absorbed all this energy, what do they do with it? They dump it out as heat to the environment, and so can raise the temperature of their surroundings by many degrees. This is the basis for what scientists call “photothermal therapy,” the idea that if you could target gold nanoparticles to cancer cells, or pathogens, then you could shine light at the wavelength you desire and kill the cancer cells or pathogens. Finally, if you make gold nanoparticles really really small, like 10 atoms across, they no longer act like a noble, unreactive metal at all; they become very active catalysts, like the catalytic converter in your car. So chemists are also very interested in figuring out the transition between unreactive and reactive nanoparticles.

For anyone who might be interested in the series, the Academic Minute covers a wide variety of topics ranging from ‘addiction vaccines’ to ‘digital transgender archives’ to ‘aeroponic gardening’ to ‘a science of the voice’ to ‘Viking social standing’ and more. The series seems to have been started in January 2011 and they’ve been adding to the list of podcasts at a lively rate (lately, it’s one per day). There are over 200 pages of audio podcasts available for your listening pleasure.