New Invention Triggers One of Quantum Mechanics’ Strangest and Most Useful Phenomena



Future computer, sensing, and encryption technologies may become noticeably smaller and more potent thanks to an ultrathin creation that enables scientists to manage the bizarre but useful quantum mechanical phenomenon. New research that was just released in the journal Science describes the device.

According to researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, this gadget might replace a large collection of apparatus used to link photons in the peculiar quantum phenomenon known as entanglement. It is a type of metasurface, a nano-engineered substance that opens the door to intricate photon entanglement not before feasible with compact technology.

When photons are considered to be entangled, it indicates that they are connected in a way that actions on one of them have an impact on the other, regardless of their location or distance from one another in the universe. It is a strange consequence of quantum mechanics, the physical principles that govern microscopic particles and other entities.

The Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies created a metasurface that is 100 times thinner than paper and is illuminated by green laser light. For the Department of Energy Office of Science, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories jointly manage CINT. Credit: Sandia National Laboratories' Craig Fritz

Although the phenomenon may appear strange, scientists have found ways to use it to absorb information differently. Entanglement, for instance, aids in the preservation of fragile quantum information and the correction of mistakes in quantum computing, a discipline that could one day have profound effects on science, business, and national security. Advanced new encryption techniques are now made possible by entanglement, allowing for safe communication.

Part of the research on the ground-breaking gadget, which is 100 times thinner than a sheet of paper, was done at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a user facility run by Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories under the Department of Energy Office of Science. The Basic Energy Sciences program of the Office of Science provided funds to the Sandia team.

This peculiar quantum phenomenon can be accessed through the new metasurface. It resembles Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass," when the young protagonist Alice enters a strange, new world through a mirror.

Scientists use a laser to pass through their new invention rather than people going through it. An incredibly thin piece of glass covered in nanoscale structures constructed of gallium arsenide, a popular semiconductor material, allows the light beam to pass through.

Igal Brener, a senior scientist at Sandia, remarked, "It scrambles all the optical beams." He oversaw the Sandia team and is an authority in the subject of nonlinear optics. A pair of entangled photons with different wavelengths occasionally leave the sample in the same direction as the approaching laser beam, according to him.

Igal Brener, a senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories and a nonlinear optics specialist, headed a team that assisted in the demonstration of a device that paved the way for potent, portable quantum information processing technology. Credit: Sandia National Laboratories' Craig Fritz

Brener expressed his excitement for this technology because it is made to create intricate webs of entangled photons. It can create multiple pairings at once, some of which may be indistinguishable from one another, rather than just one pair at a time. For advanced information processing systems, some technologies require these complicated variations of so-called multi-entanglement.

However, they lack the required level of complicated, multi-entanglement. Other small technologies based on silicon photonics can also entangle photons. It had previously been impossible to get such results without using numerous tables full of lasers, specialized crystals, and other optical apparatus.

When this multi-entanglement requires more than two or three pairs, Brener remarked, "it is quite complicated and kind of intractable." The task would have previously needed extremely complicated optical setups, but these nonlinear metasurfaces practically accomplish it in one sample.

The team successfully tweaked their metasurface to generate entangled photons with different wavelengths, as described in the Science study. This was a crucial step before concurrently producing multiple pairs of densely entangled photons.

The effectiveness of their device, or the speed at which they can produce groups of entangled photons, is less than that of other methods, the researchers say in their report, and it will need to be improved.

A metasurface is a man-made substance that can interact with light and other electromagnetic waves differently from other types of materials. According to Brener, commercial businesses are hard at work creating metasurfaces since they require less space and have greater light-handling capabilities than, say, conventional lenses.

With metasurfaces, you can now substitute bulky optical elements and lenses, according to Brener. "Consumer goods will undergo a revolution thanks to those kinds of metasurfaces."

One of the top organizations conducting research on metasurfaces and metamaterials worldwide is Sandia. Scientists have access to all the specialized equipment they need to design, make, and analyze these ambitious new materials thanks to the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, which is close by, and the Microsystems Engineering, Science and Applications complex, which produces compound semiconductors.

A former postdoctoral researcher at Sandia who worked on several sections of the project, Sylvain Gennaro, said, "The work was demanding since it required precision nanofabrication technology to create the crisp, narrowband optical resonances that seed the quantum process of the study."

Together with a research team lead by physicist Maria Chekhova from Sandia, the device was conceived, made, and tested. She works at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light as a specialist in the quantum entanglement of photons.

Tomás Santiago-Cruz stated that metasurfaces are bringing about a paradigm change in quantum optics by fusing extremely small quantum light sources with expansive opportunities for quantum state engineering. He is the paper's initial author and a member of the Max Plank team.

The most recent research on metamaterials, according to Brener, who has studied them for more than a decade, may herald the beginning of a second revolution in which these materials are developed not only as novel lenses but also as a technology for quantum information processing and other novel applications.

One wave with metasurfaces was already well-established and was about to arrive. Perhaps there will be another surge of creative applications," he speculated.

By SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES 

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