Physicists at Princeton University report the successful on-demand entanglement of individual molecules, a significant milestone that they say leverages quantum mechanics to achieve these unusual states, according to new research.
Quantum entanglement remains one of the great enigmas in contemporary physics. Essentially, the phenomenon entails particles that are bound together in such a manner that any alteration in the quantum state of one particle instantaneously influences its entangled counterpart.
Remarkably, this connection persists even over vast distances, an effect initially labeled as “spooky action at a distance” following its introduction in a seminal 1935 paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen.
While remaining mysterious, recent years have seen substantial progress in unraveling the mysteries of entanglement, with the additional promise for its practical application in diverse fields such as quantum computing, cryptography, and communication technology.
Now, the Princeton team’s recent success can be counted among these developments, in the application of quantum entanglement toward producing beneficial future technologies. The team’s work was recently described in a paper that appeared in the journal Science.
Lawrence Cheuk, assistant professor of physics at Princeton and the paper’s senior author, says the achievement helps to pave the way toward the construction of quantum computers and related technologies, which will inevitably overtake their classical counterparts in speed and efficiency in the coming years.
Significantly, the new research also achieves “quantum advantage,” whereby quantum bits, or qubits, can simultaneously exist in multiple states, unlike classical binary computer bits which are limited to assuming values of either 0 or 1.
“This is a breakthrough in the world of molecules because of the fundamental importance of quantum entanglement,” Cheuk said in a statement.
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