Turn up the voltage, and monogamous quantum relationships fall apart in surprising ways.
Are quantum particles polygamous? New experiments suggest some of them abandon long-standing partnerships when conditions get crowded.
Quantum particles do not behave like isolated dots.
They interact, form bonds, and follow strict social rules. One of the most fundamental divides separates fermions and bosons.
Quantum particles have a social life, of a sort. They interact and form relationships with each other, and one of the most important features of a quantum particle is whether it is an introvert—a fermion—or an extrovert—a boson.
Extroverted bosons are happy to crowd into a shared quantum state, producing dramatic phenomena like superconductivity and superfluidity. In contrast, introverted fermions will not share their quantum state under any condition—enabling all the structures of solid matter to form.
But the social lives of quantum particles go beyond whether they are fermions or bosons. Particles interact in complex ways to produce everything we know, and interactions between quantum particles are key to understanding why materials have their particular properties. For instance, electrons are sometimes tightly locked into a relationship with a specific atom in a material, making it an insulator. Other times, electrons are independent and roam freely—the hallmark of a conductor.
When quantum particles work together, they can produce signals far stronger than any one particle could generate alone. This collective phenomenon, called superradiance, is a powerful example of cooperation at the quantum level. Until now, superradiance was mostly known for making quantum systems lose their energy too quickly, posing challenges for quantum technologies.
But a new study published in Nature Physics turns this idea on its head—revealing that collective superradiant effects can instead produce self-sustained, long-lived microwave signals with exciting potential for future quantum devices.
“What’s remarkable is that the seemingly messy interactions between spins actually fuel the emission,” explains Dr. Wenzel Kersten, first author of the study. “The system organizes itself, producing an extremely coherent microwave signal from the very disorder that usually destroys it.”
One of the world’s foremost philosophers of physics, Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU and Founder and Director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics.
He is a member of the “Foundational Questions Institute” of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and author of ‘The Metaphysics Within Physics’, ‘Truth and Paradox: Solving the Riddles’ and ‘Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity’
Tap the link to watch his full talk now: https://iai.tv/video/tim-maudlin-why-imaginary-numbers-are-c…um-physics
Why do imaginary numbers appear at the foundation of quantum mechanics? This question, which puzzled even great physicists like Eugene Wigner, opens up deeper issues about what it means to explain features of the mathematical formalism used in physical theory. Join philosopher of science Tim Maudlin as he explores that question through the lens of quantum dynamics, arguing that the appearance of complex numbers in Schrödinger’s equation is not arbitrary, but motivated by the need for a particular kind of wave-like structure in fundamental dynamics.
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This change will revolutionize leadership, governance, and workforce development. Successful firms will invest in technology and human capital by reskilling personnel, redefining roles, and fostering a culture of human-machine collaboration.
The Imperative of Strategy Artificial intelligence is not preordained; it is a tool shaped by human choices. How we execute, regulate, and protect AI will determine its impact on industries, economies, and society. I emphasized in Inside Cyber that technology convergence—particularly the amalgamation of AI with 5G, IoT, distributed architectures, and ultimately quantum computing—will augment both potential and hazards.
The issue at hand is not if AI will transform industries—it has already done so. The essential question is whether we can guide this change to enhance security, resilience, and human well-being. Individuals who interact with AI strategically, ethically, and with a long-term perspective will gain a competitive advantage and foster the advancement of a more innovative and secure future.
Controlling light at dimensions thousands of times smaller than the thickness of a human hair is one of the pillars of modern nanotechnology.
An international team led by the Quantum Nano-Optics Group of the University of Oviedo and the Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology Research Center (CINN/Principalty of Asturias-CSIC) has published a review article in Nature Nanotechnology detailing how to manipulate fundamental optical phenomena when light couples to matter in atomically thin materials.
The study focuses on polaritons, hybrid quasiparticles that emerge when light and matter interact intensely. By using low-symmetry materials, known as van der Waals materials, light ceases to propagate in a conventional way and instead travels along specific directions, a characteristic that gives rise to phenomena that challenge conventional optics.
On the Same Origin of Spacetime, Matter, and Everything https://lnkd.in/gCs9XBzx What if space, time, matter, gravity, dark matter, and dark energy all come from one thing: quantum entanglement? 1. Reality starts as a quantum state (not spacetime) In EWOG, the universe does **not** begin with space and time. It begins with a single quantum state: |Ψ⟩ ∈ No coordinates No distances No clocks Only quantum information. ➡ Spacetime appears later. 2. Geometry is quantum, not classical Spacetime is not a background — it is made of operators: ĝ_μν, R̂_μν, R̂ What we experience as classical spacetime is just the **average**: g_μν = ⟨ ĝ_μν ⟩ Intuition: Spacetime is a *shadow* cast by quantum entanglement. 3.
Dark matter is an elusive type of matter that does not emit, absorb or reflect light, interacting very weakly with ordinary matter. These characteristics make it impossible to detect using conventional technologies used by physicists to study matter particles.
As it has never been observed before, the exact composition of dark matter remains unknown. One proposed theory is that this elusive type of matter is comprised of light particles with very small masses, below 1 eV (electronvolt), which behave more like waves than particles.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Chuo University recently explored the possibility of searching for sub-GeV dark matter using quantum sensors, advanced systems that rely on quantum mechanical effects to detect extremely weak signals.