Latest / The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast / A New Way to Entangle Light and Matter

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A New Way to Entangle Light and Matter · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Core side Quantum Physics podcast, an exploration
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Right now, the device you're using to listen to this
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: conversation operates strictly by the reliable, somewhat boring laws of
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: classical physics.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, completely standard, every day classical physics.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly, it doesn't teleport information, It's battery can't exist in
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: two states at once, And the atoms making up his
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: screen are behaving well, exactly is.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Expected, right, they're playing by the rules.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Right. We're generally taught that the magical rule breaking world
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: of quantum mechanics is strictly locked away, confined to these
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: freezing microscopic laboratories where scientists manipulate isolated subatomic specs.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Mm hmm, totally isolated.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: But I want you to imagine a scenario where that
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: boundary just doesn't exist, Like, what if those reality bending
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: quantum properties could be scaled up, bottled, and harnessed inside
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: the everyday macrostopic objects you can actually hold in your hand.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Blurring that line completely up ends our understanding of how
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: reality is structured.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, we have spent a century treating the classical
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: world in the quantum world as to totally separate domains
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: with this massive.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Wall between them, the huge wall.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and breaking that wall down isn't just a theoretical exercise,
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: you know. It represents a fundamental shift in our technological capability.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: And that shift is really the entire mission of today's conversation.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: We are exploring a confirmed physical mechanism that essentially bypasses
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: the usual fragility of quantum mechanics.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which is huge, It really is. Yeah.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Scientists are essentially tricking solid mac chroscopic junks of matter
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: into tangling up with light and then using that light
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: to extract raw quantum power out of the material. Okay,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: let's unpack this, let's do it. We all know the
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: basic headache of quantum entanglement. The phenomenon itself is incredibly powerful,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: multiple particles sharing a single identity, so that whatever happens
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: to one instantly affects the other, no matter the distance. Right.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Einstein called it spooky action at a distance, exactly.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: The spooky action. Yeah, but we also know it's great
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: nemesis is fragility. The holy grail has always been scaling
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: it up past just a few isolated particles.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the problem you're referring to is decoherence, and it
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: is honestly the single biggest roadblock in quantum physics.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Because it just falls apart so easily, right.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh instantly. Entanglement is a state of perfect, delicate synchronization.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: To keep particles entangled, you normally have to isolate them
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: in a total vacuum, super cool them to a fraction
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: of a degree above absolute zero, and just completely shield
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: them from the rest of the universe.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Wow, that sounds intense.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: It is, because if a stray atom bumps into the system,
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: or there's even a microscopic fluctuation in temperature, the whole
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: synchronization just shatters. It breaks exactly. The particles stop acting
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: like a unified system and revert to being boring, independent
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: specs of matter. And if we connect this to the
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: bigger picture, macroscopic entanglement is really the holy grail for
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: the future of computing and sensing. We desperately need it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I used to think of entanglement like a pair of
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: magical dice, where rolling a six in New York means
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: a six instantly rolls in Tokyo.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: That's a classic analogy.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But to understand the difficulty of macroscopic systems, a
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: better way to visualize it might be a perfectly synchronized
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: flock of birds flying in total darkness. I like that, right.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: The movement of one bird instantly dictates the movement of
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the entire flock. But keeping just two or three birds
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: synchronized like that is hard enough. Definitely, scaling up to
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: a macroscopic system means trying to synchronize billions or trillions
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: of birds at once Earth Do physicists expect to link
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: millions of these dice or birds together at once without
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: the whole system collapsing?
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Well, and doing so while a hurricane is blowing through
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: the flock to keep your analogy going a hurricane, Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: Because in a macroscopic object, like a solid piece of
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: metal resting on a table, there is an overwhelming amount.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Of thermal noise just from the room temperature.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Exactly, billions of atoms are constantly vibrating, bumping into each other,
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: interacting with the environment.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: It's pure chaos.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: It is the sheer mathematics of keeping all those interacting
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: particles in a delicate, unified quantum state while they're subjected
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: to the chaotic heat and vibration of everyday reality. Makes
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: large scale entanglement seem completely impossible.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Which makes the idea of locking billions of atoms together
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: in a solid piece of material sound like a fool's
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: errand the entire system should just collapse the second you
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: even try to look at it.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: It really should.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Yet the physics we are exploring today bypasses that thermal hurricane.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: It relies on a highly controlled physical arena designed to
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: force these massive atomic structures to basically play along.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the physical setup is brilliantly counterintuitive. How so,
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: it relies on a specialized, incredibly small mirrored cavity. You
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: can picture a microscopic hallway lined with perfect mirrors just
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: facing each other.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, a microscopic hall of mirrors.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: I can picture that right inside this hallway. The macroscopic
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: material being manipulated is placed directly in the center. But
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: the mirrors aren't there to observe the material. They're actually
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: there to trap light. To trap the light exactly, they
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: force photons to bounce back and forth through the solid
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: matter millions.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Of times, millions of times. Wow.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, giving the light and the matter maximum opportunity to interact.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: But wait, just shining a trapped laser beam at a
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: piece of metal inside a microscopic hall of mirrors doesn't
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: spontaneously generate quantum entanglement, does it? No? Definitely not, because
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: if it did, I feel like we would have discovered
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: this decades ago. The matter inside that cavity, resting in
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: its normal state, isn't going to do anything spectacular.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: You're completely right. The normal interactions between light and macroscopic
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: matter are far too weak.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: It just passes right through, exactly.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: The light generally just passes through, scatters, or gets absorbed
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: as heat. To force that profound synchronized entanglement, the solid
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: material must be manipulated into a highly specific state.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: And what is that state.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: It's known as a quantum critical point.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: A quantum critical point. This sounds like the absolute crux
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: of the entire method.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: It is the absolute foundation of it.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, because my brain immediately translates critical point into a
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: phase transition.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: Which makes total sense.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: And when I think of a phase transition, I think
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: of ice melting into water. We learn in elementary school
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: that you leave an ice cube out, it absorbs heat,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: and it transitions from a solid phase to a liquid phase.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Are we just talking about melting the metal inside this cavity?
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: The classical phase transition of ice melting is a helpful visual,
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: but it's fundamentally different in terms of the underlying mechanics.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Different how well, When ice melts, the transition is driven
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: entirely by thermal energy. You add heat the water molecules
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: absorb that kinetic energy. They begin to jiggle violently when
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: they break apart exactly eventually they break their rigid crystalline structure.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: That is a phase transition dictated by temperature. A quantum
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: phase transition operates under a completely different set of rules,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: completely divorced from temperature.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Wait, so we are dealing with a phase change that
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: would theoretically happen even if the room was freezing coal.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: Actually, true, quantum phase transitions theoretically occur exactly at absolute zero.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Absolute zero.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, an environment utterly devoid of thermal energy. At absolute zero,
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: molecules aren't jiggling from heat. Instead, the transition is driven
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: purely by the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Specifically Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: Right, Exactly, Even when all heat is removed, inherent quantum
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: fluctuation still exist. A quantum critical point is the exact
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: threshold where a material is being forced to transition between
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: two fundamentally different ground states of quantum organization.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Give me an example of those states.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Well, it might be transitioning between being a standard conductor
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: of electricity and an exotic superconductor were all resistance fantasies,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: oh I see. Or it might be shifting between two
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: completely different magnetic identities.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: So it's essentially a macroscopic identity crisis.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: That is a perfect way to put it.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: The solid object is teetering on the boundary line of
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: two distinct ways of existing, but at the deepest, most
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: foundational level of reality, right.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: And what's fascinating here is how the material behaves when
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: it is poised exactly on that boundary line.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: It becomes super sensitive, unbelievably sensitive.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: When the solid object is hovering at the quantum critical point,
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: its internal quantum state is in a massive state of flux.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Because it can't decide.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: Exactly, it is highly unstable, desperately to choose between phase
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: and phase B. Because of that, instability. It's sensitivity skyrockets,
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: and the energy barrier required for it to interact strongly
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: with light drops.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: To almost nothing, so just latches on.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: It's practically primed to grab onto any external stimulus that
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: enters the system, which.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Explains why the trap works. But it leaves a gaping
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: mechanical question, Oh what's that? Well, we know the material
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: needs to be teetering on the edge of this quantum
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: critical point, but we just establish we cannot use thermal.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Energy to get it there, right, no heat allowed.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: So we cannot just throw the mirrored cavity into an
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: oven or submerge it in liquid nitrogen to trigger the transition.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: So how do you actually force a solid piece of
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: matter into this precarious, highly sensitive state without destroying the
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: delicate quantum properties you are trying to extract.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: You have to manipulate the physical environment of the material
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: through what are known as non thermal methods.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Non thermal so no temperature changes exactly.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: If temperature is off the table, physicists must turn to
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: sheer mechanics. The primary techniques is immense physical.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Pressure, like literally crushing it.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, by placing the material in an anvil and applying
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: hydrostatic pressure, you physically crush the atomic lattice.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, you are.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Forcing the atoms closer together, which dramatically alters the way
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: their outermost electrons overlap and interact. That shifting electron behavior
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: can fundamentally alter the quantum phase of the entire macroscopic object.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: So you are literally squeezing the material into a new quantum.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Identity, squeezing it right to the edge.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: It reminds me of trying to move a massive, stubborn
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: boulder right to the absolute millimeter edge of a cliff.
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  Speaker 2: You can't just wish it there.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: No, you definitely can't.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: You were using sheer mechanical force to inch this heavy
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: object right up to the precipice. And once you manage
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: to balance that boulder exactly on the critical edge, the
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: physics change. It takes almost zero energy to push it over.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: A tiny breeze could send it tumbling down.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: That physical crush reshapes the electron orbitals perfectly, acting exactly
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: like that mechanical push. But if you don't want to
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: use sheer pressure, you can also use chemical substitution.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Chemical substitution, yeah, scientists.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Can take the lattice structure of the solid material and
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: surgically swap out one chemical component for another. By replacing
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: a few atoms here and there with atoms of a
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: slightly different size or electron count, you alter the internal
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: stresses of the material from the inside out.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Ah, So you're changing the internal pressure instead of applying
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: external pressure.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Exactly by fine tuning the chemical makeup, we're slowly turning
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: the dial on the physical pressure. You inch that boulder
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: closer and closer to the cliff edge.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: And when it is perfectly balanced on that quantum critical
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: point hovering in that identity crisis, that tiny breeze comes
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: into play. The photon.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: Yes, the introduction of the photon into the mirrored cavity
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: is where the hybrid state actually forms.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Because the barrier is.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: So low now right, because the threshold for interaction has
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: dropped so unbelievably low, the individual articles of light bouncing
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: back and forth between the mirrors begin to couple strongly
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: with the unstable matter.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: So it's no longer just a laser reflecting off a surface.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Not at all. It is no longer just light shining
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: on a metal surface. The photons and the highly sensitive
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: electron structures of the material intertwine.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: They merge.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Yes, the electromagnetic field of the light physically binds with
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: the quantum fluctuations of the matter.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: The light becomes a functional part of the material's quantum system.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: They are acting as a single entangled entity inside the cavity.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: And the consequence of that union is a profound physical mapping.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: What do you mean by mapping?
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: Well, if the material is then pushed just a microscopic
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: fraction further, if the boulder finally tips over the cliff
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: edge and completes the transition into its new quantum phase,
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: the entangled light is forced to mirror that change.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Oh so the light changes with it.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, properties of the photon, like its polarization or its phase,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: physically alter to reflect the new state of the solid matter. Wow,
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: the light becomes a dynamic blueprint of the material's quantum identity.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, so we've engineered a way to force everyday matter
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: into a quantum identity crisis, trap it in a microscopic
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: hall of mirrors, and use trapped photons to mathematically bind
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: with it.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: That is the basic mechanism.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a stunning triumph of engineering. But I
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: have to play the skeptic for a moment here.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Go for it.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: We've built this incredibly complex trap and we know how
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: to push something off the cliff. But what solid material
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: are we actually putting inside this mirrored cavity? I imagine
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: you can't just snip a piece of standard copper wire
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: from hardware store, crush it in an anvil, and expect
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: it to magically entangle with a laser beam.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: No, you definitely cannot use standard copper. The choice of
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: material is highly specific.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, so what do they use to make this.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: Extraction process viable for real world technology? Physicists rely on
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: a deeply mysterious class of materials known as strange metals.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Strange metals great name.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: It is, and the behavior of a strange metal completely
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: defies the standard models of electricity.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Defies it how well?
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: If you take that piece of standard copper wire and
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: measure its electrical resistance as the temperature changes, the resistance
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: plots out on a predictable curving graph.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Right standard high school physics.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: Exactly, it behaves according to classical thermodynamic rules. But in
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: a strange metal, the electrical resistance drops in a perfectly
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: straight line, directly proportional to the temperature, all the way
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: down to absolute zero. Wait, a straight line, perfectly straight line.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Why does a straight line of resistance matter so much?
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: What makes the electrons in a strange metal behave so
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: differently than the electrons and copper.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: It comes down to a fundamental speed limit in quantum physics,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: known as planky in dissipation.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Planky in dissipation.
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: Okay, what is that? In a normal metal, electrons bounce
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: around and scatter off the atomic lattice like independent pinballs.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: But in a strange metal, the electrons are interacting and
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: scattering off each other as fast as the laws of
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: quantum mechanics will physically allow.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: So they are hitting an absolute speed limit.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, And because they hit this universal speed limit, they
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: actually lose their individual identities. They just blend together, exactly,
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: They stop acting like independent pinballs and merge into a collective,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: heavily entangled quantum fluid. They essentially become an electron soup.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: An electron soup, meaning the entanglement isn't something we have
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: to artificially generate. The macroscopic entanglement is already naturally occurring
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: inside the strange metal.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Exactly. It is a massive, naturally occurring reservoir of quantum synchronization.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Strange metals exist in a perpetual state of quantum criticality.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: They are just sitting there.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: They are naturally hovering near that cliff edge all the time.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: But historically, that incredible resource has been entirely locked.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Away because it's trapped in the metal.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Right, the entanglement is confined to the electron soup moving
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: within the physical lattice of the solid metal. We knew
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: the magic was in there, but extracting an entangled electron
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: from a piece of metal and carrying it across a laboratory.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Is impossible because the moment you pull it out.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: The moment the electron hits the outside environment, it succumbs
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: to decoherence. The thermal hurricane destroys the synchronization immediately.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Ah right, But if we place that strange metal inside
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: the mirrored cavity, Wait no, If we place it inside
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: and we introduce the photons, the light can interact with
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: that pre existing electron soup precisely.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: The photons bounce between the mirrors, passing through the strange
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: metal millions.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Of times, and since the barrier is gone.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Because the strange metal is naturally hovering at a quantum
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: critical point, its barrier for interaction is practically nonexistent. Wow,
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: the light dips into the entangled electron soup and their
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: identities just fuse. The polarization of the light physically encodes
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: the complex entanglement of the massive atomic system.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: And unlike an electron, a photon is basically a particle
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: of pure movement. It doesn't get bogged down on the
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: physical lattice of the metal. It is designed to travel exactly.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: Once the light has fully mapped the quantum identity of
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: the strange metal, scientists simply open a microscopic optical door
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: in the.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Cavity and let the light out.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: The photons stream out into the open space, and because
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: they are deeply entangled with the strange metal, they carry
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: the structural blueprint of that macroscopic entanglement right along with them.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: That is unbelievable.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: We have successfully retrieved the fragile quantum synchronization from a
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: solid piece of matter, bottled it up in a highly
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: mobile beam of light, and unleashed it into the world
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: as a usable resource.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: So what does this all mean? We have essentially hacked
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: the system. We couldn't physically pull the entanglement out of
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: the metal without destroying it. So we sent the light in,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: allowed the light to absorb the properties of the electron soup,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: and let the light fly away.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Yes, and this raises an important question regarding application. When
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: we talk about extracting raw quantum power and bottlenecking it
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: into a beam of light, what do we actually do
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: with it?
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Right? What's the use case?
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: This extraction mechanism completely unblocks the development of next generation
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: sensing technology by passing the limitations that played classical devices.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: You know, when you talk about unblocking next generation technology,
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: my mind naturally gravitates toward quantum computing or cryptography.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Sure, those are big buzzwords, but.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: The most immediate application seems to be heavily focused on
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: quantum sensing. Why are sensors the primary real world target
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: for this extracted macroscopic entanglement.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: It comes down to the mechanics of how a sensor
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: fundamentally operates. Any sensor, whether it's the motion detector on
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: your porch or satellite mapping the ocean floor, is designed
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: to detect tiny changes in the environment.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Like fluctuations in magnetic fields, temperature, or gravity exactly.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Classical sensors are inherently limited by what physicists call the shot.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Noise limit the shot noise limit.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a baseline level of static in the universe,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: and once this signal becomes weaker than that, a classical
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: sensor simply cannot detect it.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: It's like trying to listen to someone whisper from across
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: a crowded room while a television is blaring. The background
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: noise just completely drowns out the data.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: That's a perfect analogy. But quantum entangled particles do not
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: operate under the shot noise limit.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: They don't know.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: They operate closer to the Heisenberg limit. Because entangled particles
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: are perfectly inextricably correlated, they act as a single, unified system,
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: so they're more sensitive, incredibly more sensitive. If you build
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: a sensor using the highly entangled light extracted from our
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: strange metal, you possess a diagnostic tool of unprecedented sensitivity.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: How sensitive are we talking?
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: If a microscopic fluctuation in a magnetic field interacts with
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: even a fraction of the untangled photon stream, the entire
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: system registers the disturbance instantaneously, instantly, Yes, the collective nature
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: of the entanglement amplifies the signal, allowing the sensor to
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: detect environmental changes that are utterly invisible to classical machinery.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, we are talking about utilizing this extracted light
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: to build sensors that could map the faint microscopic magnetic
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: fields generated by the firing neurons in the human brain. Yes, zoo,
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: which could completely eliminate the need for massive, super cooled
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: MRI machines, It really could. Or creating inertial navigation systems
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: that can measure the microscopic variations in Earth's gravitational field
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: as a vehicle moves over the terrain, rendering external GPS
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: satellites completely obsolete.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: The possibilities are enormous.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: By dragging this macroscopic entanglement out of the dark and
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: into a usable beam of light, we are building tools
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: that probe the absolute fundamental limits of physical reality.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: It is the realization of decades of theoretical physics. We
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: are no longer just observing the quantum realm. We are physically.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Mining it, mining it.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: I love that we are taking the strange, synchronized properties
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: that govern the microscopic universe, scaling them up inside solid matter,
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: and barding them out for classical use.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: It radically shifts your perspective on what physical matter is
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: actually capable of. Let's trace the mechanics of this journey
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: one more time, because the engineering involved is staggering. We
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: started with the immense frustration of decoherence.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: The thermal noise problem right.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: How the chaotic thermal noise the macroscopic world usually shatters
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: the delicate synchronization of quantum entanglement. We looked at the
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: physical work round trapping a solid object inside of microscopic
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: mirrored cavity.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: And we then explored how to lower the object's.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Defenses using those non thermal methods.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: Exactly, by utilizing non thermal methods like crushing, hydrostatic pressure,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: or precise chemical substitution, we physically force the lattice structure
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: of the matter into a quantum critical point.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Which is a deeply unstable phase transition occurring at the
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: fundamental quantum level. Inch by inch, pushing the boulder to
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: the absolute edge of the cliff.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: Right, And once the material is hovering in that precarious
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: identity crisis the energy barrier.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: We introduce a trapped beam of photons, and.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: The light and the matter couple strongly fusing their identities.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: And by utilizing strange metals materials whose electrons are already
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: operating at the universal speed limit for scattering, creating a
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: naturally occurring entangled soup.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: The light serves as a perfect mathematical mirror.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: The light absorbs the entanglement, we open the cavity door,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: and the photons carry the macroscopic quantum properties out into
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: the open world. It is a brilliant, highly intricate extraction process.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: But here's where it gets really interesting.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Oh where does your mind taket?
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Well, we have spent this entire conversation talking about getting
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: this entanglement out of the mirrored box and utilizing it
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: for localized hyper sensitive sensors. But let's follow the physics
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: to its logical, slightly terrifying, totally on spiring conclusion.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'm listening.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: If we now have a confirmed mechanical pathway to easily
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: entangle light and solid matter, and we can extract that
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: light to carry quantum properties out into the open world,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: what happens when we start firing these highly entangled photons
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: across vast distances to interact with other macroscopic objects.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: You are looking at the foundational mechanics for macro entanglement
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: across a vast geographical space. Right.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: If I have a piece of strange metal sitting in
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: a mirrored cavity in New York, and I entangle it
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: with a beam of light, could I theoretically shoot that
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: extracted light through a transoceanic fiber optic cable straight into
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: a second mirrored cavity holding a completely different block of
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: metal in Tokyo. Theoretically yes, Could the everyday solid materials
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: around you one day be invisibly quantumly tethered to objects
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: on the other side of the planet.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: It's staggering thought.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: The physics suggests that a physical action performed on a
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: desk in one country could instantaneously alter the structural quantum
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: state of a desk in another. We are moving away
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: from a world where quantum mechanics is just a neat
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: trick performed by scientists in isolated lab coats, and moving
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: toward a world where the physical, well macroscopic infrastructure of
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: reality itself could be tangled up in an invisible, instantaneous web.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: It really forces us to completely reevaluate the concept of locality.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: We are incredibly biased ard the idea that an object
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: can only physically affect the environment immediately surrounding it.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Because that's what our eyes tell us exactly.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: But once you master the extraction and fiber optic transmission
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: of macroscopic entanglement, physical distance becomes completely computationally irrelevant.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Distance becomes nothing more than a suggestion. It is something
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: for you to just chew on the next time you
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: pick up a coffee cup or tap on the steering
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: wheel of your car. The line between the solid, reliable
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: world you see and the weird, synchronized world of the
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: quantum realm is a lot thinner than you think, much thinner,
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: and with breakthroughs like this, that line is getting thinner
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: every single day. Keep questioning the physical rules of the
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: reality around you. We'll be right back here next time,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: ready to unpack whatever impossible things science has managed to
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: conquer next Until then, stay curious.