Certain things are related to some extent, while others do not. For instance, if a person is randomly selected from a group and happens to be significantly taller than the average, there is a high likelihood they will also weigh more than average. In other words, one quantity can contain information about another.
With quantum physics, the connections between different quantities can be even more robust, where particles or parts of a quantum system can share information. Interestingly, the measurement of this information does not depend on the system size but only on its surface.
Quantum Information Exhibits Higher Interconnectedness Compared to What Classical Physics Permits
Recently, an experiment conducted at TU Wien confirmed a strange conjecture about quantum information. It was discussed in the paper, titled "Verification of the Area Law of Mutual Information in a Quantum Field Simulator," which was published in Nature Physics.
To accomplish this, theoretical guidance was provided by collaborating institutions like Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik in Garching, FU Berlin, ETH Zürich, and New York University.
As per the press release via EurekAlert!, Mohammadamin Tajik of the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology has explained that classically small particles in a gas container behave in an unconnected way, and mutual information between two particles is zero if the system is in equilibrium.
However, if particles behave quantumly, then they are mathematically connected, meaning that they are not independent of one another. The mutual information between particles is larger than zero and only depends on the outer bounding surface of the subsystem.
Tajik's strange prediction that the mutual information between subsystems of a many-body quantum system is determined solely by the surface area may seem unintuitive, as classical systems behave differently.
For example, the information contained in a book is dependent on its volume, not just the area of the book's cover. However, in quantum systems, information appears closely connected to the surface area, whereas classical systems display different behavior.
Tajik added that quantum systems could affect data processing by behaving differently from classical systems as classical data analysis relies on a book's volume being measured, while quantum data analysis relies on surface area. This could greatly affect the processing of large amounts of data and future computing; and this could have major implications across the wider digital landscape.
READ ALSO : Breakthrough Experiment Translates Quantum Information Across Technologies, Improving Quantum Communication
Quantum Information Confirmed To Be Shared in Different Quantum Systems
Professor Jörg Schmiedmayer and his team have discovered that the mutual information in a many-body quantum system scales with the surface area, rather than with the volume as previously thought.
They arrived at this conclusion by studying a cloud of ultracold atoms held in place by an atom chip and cooled to just above absolute zero. According to the press release, they developed a special tomography technique to perturb the atoms slightly and observe the resulting dynamics.
The team also found that shared information has a limited range as long as the system's temperature does not reach absolute zero. The coherence length in quantum physics indicates the distance to which particles behave similarly, and the team observed that the effect of temperature and coherence length on mutual information was confirmed in the experiment.
The results of the study are relevant to various research areas, from solid-state physics to the quantum physical study of gravity, as quantum information plays a crucial role in many technical applications of quantum physics.
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