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Researchers have studied how a 'drumstick' made of light could make a microscopic 'drum' vibrate and stand still at the same time.
A team of researchers from the UK and Australia have made a key step towards understanding the boundary between the quantum world and our everyday classical world.
Quantum mechanics is truly weird. Objects can behave like both particles and waves, and can be both here and there at the same time, defying our common sense. Such counterintuitive behaviour is typically confined to the microscopic realm and the question "why don't we see such behaviour in everyday objects?" challenges many scientists today.
Now, a team of researchers have developed a new technique to generate this type of quantum behaviour in the motion of a tiny drum just visible to the naked eye. The details of their research are published today in New Journal of Physics.
Project principal investigator, Dr Michael Vanner from the Quantum Measurement Lab at Imperial College London, said: "Such systems offer significant potential for the development of powerful new quantum-enhanced technologies, such as ultra-precise sensors, and new types of transducers.
[...] In the quantum world, a drum can vibrate and stand still at the same time. However, generating such quantum motion is very challenging. lead author of the project Dr Martin Ringbauer from the University of Queensland node of the Australian Research Council Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, said: "You need a special kind of drumstick to make such a quantum vibration with our tiny drum."
In recent years, the emerging field of quantum optomechanics has made great progress towards the goal of a quantum drum using laser light as a type of drumstick. However, many challenges remain, so the authors' present study takes an unconventional approach.
Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/186346/can-quantum-drum-vibrate-stand-still/
Generation of Mechanical Interference Fringes by Multi-Photon Counting‘’ by M Ringbauer, T J Weinhold, L A Howard, A G White & M R Vanner is published in New Journal of Physics 20, 053042 (2018)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @02:02AM
The writers don't understand it very well (at all) and rely on tired, counter-factual explanations.
Wave-particle duality? Not much of a thing. Fields are supreme, particles are a wave phenomenon. Even sound waves do this, high frequencies bounce around like bullets while low frequencies slosh around more (as with light)—relative to the size of the features encountered. Spectral sound diffusers and light diffraction gratings work on the same principle, the former is just way bigger than the latter.
Superposition describes waves, when applied to particles you get weird language like them being in multiple places at once. You'll never find a particle in more than one place when measured, but you can infer things about the shape of the waves in the field, which, being waves, spread out and have peaks and troughs.
This is all very simplified but I hope you get the idea. There's a few 3b1b videos I'd recommend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzRCDLre1b4 [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBnnXbOM5S4 [youtube.com]
There's lots more out there that explains stuff legitimately. The important thing about 3b1b and friends is that they don't try to explain things they don't understand, or even things they do understand but can't communicate. They're educated people trying to educate, rather than a reporter trying to sell rags or clicks or books. So you get the real explanation and the intuitions used by the people who understand the material.