Physicists may have created a strange new state of matter

In new research, scientists have trained atoms exhibit two forms of time at the same time, well, weather. While the phenomenon is not deviating time from what you would expect when looking at the clock, the matter shows behaviors from two different time modes, which gives it special properties. Scientists believe this strange double-time phenomenon could represent a new phase of matter.

Researchers from several US universities, as well as Honeywell’s quantum computing spinoff Quantinuum, collaborated on the new paper, which appeared at the end of last month In the diary Nature. The experimental setup is made up of lasers and ytterbium atoms. Ytterbium is a metallic element whose arrangement of electrons makes it uniquely suited to responding to laser treatments in a particular area of ​​the wave spectrum. To trigger the new “dynamic topological phase,” scientists first hold the ytterbium atoms in place using a field of electric ions, like a tiny magnet— then bombard them with the correct wavelength of the laser to supercool the ytterbium.

Broomfield, Colo.-based Quantinuum studies a particular quantum computer that is made of ten ytterbium atoms in a shared system. It is these ten atoms, sustained by the electric fields mentioned above, that do the math. A group of atoms can be tangled up– meaning that they are intrinsically linked to a group that acts as one piece, despite being ten separate pieces. And within that, individual atoms can adjust to reflect different information.

Think about how we write numbers. In binary, the largest ten-digit number is 1111111111, and that’s only 1023 total. But you can write ten digits in base 10, our usual counting numbers, and get 9,999,999,999. This is achieved simply by increasing the number of possibilities each digit can dial from (0, 1) to (0, 1, … 8, 9). So what about a system in which, theoretically, each of the ten atoms could be placed anywhere on the dial?

If that sounds amazing, you’re not wrong! There are multiple reasons why scientists and industry speculators around the world are watching the field of quantum computers with bated breath. But there is still a very important catch, and that is where this research comes into play. The atoms in the quantum computer, known as quantum bits, or qubitsare really vulnerable, because we still don’t have a great way to keep them in the quantum state for long.

That’s because of the observer principle in quantum physics: measuring a particle in a quantum state changes, and can even destroy, the quantum state. In this case, that means unhooking all atoms from the shared yoke of the entanglement. And what’s worse, the “observer” can be anything that happens in the complex soup of air, forces and particles around the quantum computer.

Let’s go back to the new experiment. Although all ten atoms are in an entangled state, they are brittle and need to be more stable. Enter three of the scientists from this research team. In 2018, they theorized that they could train ytterbium atoms to about they exist in two time streams at once. They were inspired by the Fibonacci sequence. In mathematics, it is a sequence of whole numbers that starts with zero and follows a simple rule: that each number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers. The beginning of the sequence would be 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. The team pulsed the atoms with lasers that alternated in a pattern similar to the Fibonacci sequence, where the repetition of pulses grows by including pieces that came before. But critically, No the piece repeats itself completely.

By alternating pulses in this way, they created a quasicrystal, a term for a pattern that is not as regular or repetitive as a true crystal, but has many of the same qualities. The quasi-crystal comes in two dimensions, by including both the idea of ​​an alternate pulse as well as a “magnitude” of the Fibonacci sequence pulse pattern, such as a (x,y) line graph. Each of those two dimensions comes with its own version of the flow of time. And both are flattened, and included, in the unique dimension of a single laser that turns on and off.

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Have the additional “support” of an additional virtual dimension of weather it helps make the quantum computer much more stable, researchers confirmed four years after they first theorized it. That’s because instead of a single mode of time symmetry, something introduced by a rhythmic pulse of lasers, this system has two modes. As a throat singerit is “resonating” in two different patterns at the same time.

The results of this experiment really speak for themselves. With traditional single-mode laser bursts, the quantum computer stayed in the quantum state for 1.5 seconds, which is long for this type of test. But when the researchers activated the Fibonacci-inspired quasicrystal pulses, the system remained in the quantum state for 5.5 seconds, a lifetime in quantum computing.

Quantinuum and his researchers are excited about the find, but there is still a lot of work to be done. The next thing for them will be to find a way to merge this technology with a quantum computing system that is actually doing some computing. Hopefully, the increased stability will help support the system while its qubits are vulnerable to observer effect.

Carolina delbert
Caroline Delbert is a writer, avid reader, and contributing editor to Pop Mech.

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