Stanford researchers physicists count sound particles with quantum microphone Nano-mechanical designed to generate and trap sounds, particles or vowels
Stanford physicists have developed a "quantum microphone" so sensitive that it can measure the different particles of the sound, which are called phonons.
This tool, detailed in Journal Nature on July 24, ultimately can give rise to small, more efficient quantum computers that work by manipulating the sound instead of light.
"We hope to allow quantum sensors, transducers and future quantum machines to store storage equipment from this device," said study assistant assistant professor of applied physics at Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences.
Amount of Speed
The first was proposed by Albert Einstein in 1907, the vibrations emitted by nervous atoms in phones are packaged in energy. These appear as inseparable packets, or quanta, motion or sound, depending on their frequencies.
Like photons, which are quantum carriers of light, the quantity of phones is determined, which means that their vibrational energy is restricted to discrete values - how a staircase is made up of different steps.
"There is this granularity in the sauvi, which we normally do not experience," said Sabvi-Nini. "Sound, at the quantum level, cracks."
The energy of a mechanical system can be represented as a different "falk" - 0, 1, 2, and so on - depending on the number of phones it generates. For example, a "1 simulated state" consists of a special energy phonon, a "2 simulated state" consists of two phonons with the same energy, and so on. High Fonon states are consistent with loud sounds.
So far, the scientists have been unable to measure phonon states directly in the engineered structures, because in the analogy of the energy inter-stairs between the states, space between the stages - disappears is small. Co-authors of the study, graduate student Patricio Arangoio-Ariola, said, "A phonon corresponds to ten trillion trillion times the energy needed to keep a lightbulb for ten seconds."
To solve this issue, the Stanford team engineered the world's most sensitive microphone - the one who exploits quantum theories to appear at the whims of the atoms.
In a simple microphone, incoming sound waves shock an internal membrane, and this physical displacement changes into a measurable voltage. This method does not work to detect different phones, because, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty theory, the position of a quantum object can not be properly known without replacing it.
"If you have tried to measure the number of phones with regular microphones, then the measurement work injects energy into the system that masks the energy that you are trying to measure," Safi-Nayani said.
Instead, physicists form a method of measuring Falk states - and thus, the number of phones in direct sound waves "Quantum mechanics tells us that the situation and the speed can not be precisely known - but it does not say such a thing about energy," said Safi-Naani. "Energy can be known with infinite accuracy."
Singing qubits
Quantum microphones developed have a series of supercondated nanomenical resonators, which are so small that they only appear through the electron microscope. The resonator is connected to a superconducting circuit in which the electrons are added, which move around without resistance. The circuit creates a quantum bit or qubit, which can be present in two states simultaneously and has a natural frequency, which can be read electronically. When mechanical resonators vibrate like a drumhead, they produce phonons in different states.
"Resonators are made of periodic structures that act as mirrors for sound. By introducing a flaw in these artificial latitudes, we can trap Phonon between the structures," said Arrangejoze-Ariola.
Like uncontrolled inmates, stranded phones rattles the walls of their prisons, and these mechanical motions are transported to the quattro by ultra-thin wires. A joint graduate student at Stanford Joint Joint First-Writer Alex Valkeck said, "The sensitivity of sensitivity to displacement is particularly strong when quat occurrences and resonators are almost identical."
However, by separating the system so that the queitz and the vzons vibrate at very different frequencies, the researchers weakened this mechanical connection and triggered a kind of quantum interaction, which is known as a fusive interaction, Which directly connects the quon to fibers.
This causes the frequency of shift in proportion to the number of bonds in Bond Echoes. By measuring the amount of change in tune, researchers can determine the quantitative energy level of the componating resonator - effectively the solution of foam itself.
"The level of different phonon energy seen as separate peaks in the Qubit spectrum," said Safi-Niney. "These peaks are in conformity with counterfeit states of 0, 1, 2 and so on. Many of these peaks were never seen before."
Mechanical Quantum Mechanical
Mastering the ability to accurately generate and locate phones can lead to new types of quantum devices that are able to store and retrieve encoded information as sound particles or which are optical And can change basically between mechanical signals.
Such devices can be made more compact and efficient than quantum machines which use photon, because the phonon is easy to manipulate and it contains wavelength which is thousands of times smaller than light particles Are.
Safi-Nayani said, "At the moment, people are using photon." Our tool is an important step towards making a 'mechanical quantum mechanical' computer. "