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posted by martyb on Friday March 31 2017, @11:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the curiouser-and-curiouser dept.

Scientists have discovered a new mechanism involved in the creation of paired light particles, which could have significant impact on the study of quantum physics.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have shown that when photons - the fundamental particles of light - are created in pairs, they can emerge from different, rather than the same, location.

The ground-breaking research could have significant implications for quantum physics, the theoretical basis of modern physics. Until now, the general assumption was that such photon pairs necessarily originate from single points in space.

Quantum entanglement - when particles are linked so closely that what affects one directly affects the other - is widely used in labs in numerous processes from quantum cryptography to quantum teleportation.

The UEA team were studying a process called spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), in which photon beams are passed through a crystal to generate entangled pairs of photons.

Prof David Andrews in UEA's School of Chemistry said: "When the emergent pairs equally share the energy of the input, this is known as degenerate down-conversion, or DDC.

"Until now, it has been assumed that such paired photons come from the same location. Now, the identification of a new delocalized mechanism shows that each photon pair can be emitted from spatially separated points, introducing a new positional uncertainty of a fundamental quantum origin."

An abstract is available; full article is paywalled. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.133602)


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by opinionated_science on Friday March 31 2017, @12:09PM (1 child)

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Friday March 31 2017, @12:09PM (#487048)

    journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.133602

    here's the real citation...

    phys.org "feels" like some sort of middle-man ad-collector and yet, cannot seem to find the original citation.

    Every technical word is hyperlinked to their own site...

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  • (Score: 2) by martyb on Friday March 31 2017, @01:43PM

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 31 2017, @01:43PM (#487067) Journal

    Hey, thanks for that! Yes, phys.org is kind of a strange beast. At least with ScienceDaily.com (in the vast majority of cases) they provide a link to the source. I searched for the journal info for this story but came up empty.

    I've updated the story with your link. Thanks again!

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.