theedgeofscience:Quantum Entanglement Common In Large Systems?A property of the universe so strange
theedgeofscience:Quantum Entanglement Common In Large Systems?A property of the universe so strange that our man himself, Einstein, called it “…spooky action at a distance…”. In an entangled system, two particles e.g. photos will interact and then be separated with exactly the same quantum state; that is to say, same momentum, spin etc. and then if one particle is affected, say its spin reversed, the same will be observed for the other particle. This in itself is strange enough, but it gets weirder. Even when separated by a distance, be it 1 km or 1 trillion, the two particles will change at exactly the same time; the transfer of state is instantaneous. Yet, get this; new research conducted by three researchers at Case Western Reserve University have shown that this property of entangled matter is common in larger systems.The mathematicians didn’t set out to explain how quantum entanglement works, but rather to find the threshold at which it becomes a common property. By connecting quantum mechanics and some very high level maths developed in the last five decades they were able to show that in a system of a random state, if we were to separate it into more than five subsystems, you would not observe two entangled states; however if you took the system and split it into five or less states, you would likely find two subsystems which were entangled. For example in a system of 1000 particles, two subsystems of less than 200 particles would not likely be entangled, but two subsystems larger than 200 typically will. The change around the threshold of 200 is substantial. The calculations they conducted were very precise and drew on of areas of mathematics which had previously only been developed for aesthetical reasons, but have now found a use in the real world.The lead mathematician, Stanislaw Szarek, will be attending a semester long program at Cambridge in order to continue this investigation into this strange development.This fantastically strange find has shown the world that there is promise in the new area of study, quantum information science and that one day we may be able to use this science to create hack-proof encryptions and computers so fast they make our best supercomputers look like adding machines from the 1800s. (x) -- source link