Researchers have demonstrated how to detect the weakest radio signals allowed under quantum mechanics, opening the door to advances in radio astronomy and medicine, and physics.
Researchers at Delft University of Technology (DUT) in the Netherlands have built a quantum circuit that allows them to listen to the faintest signal allowable under quantum mechanics, leading to possible advances in radio astronomy, medicine, and attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and relativity.
Weak radio signals aren’t just an annoyance for consumers looking to listen to the news or the latest pop song, it can have serious implications for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and radio astronomy. This was the challenge that scientists in the group of DUT’s Prof. Gary Steele set out to overcome.
The circuit they built, the results of which have been published in the journal Science and is available online, has been shown to detect quanta of energy in the form of photons, the weakest radio signals possible under the theory of quantum mechanics.
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