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Physicists Made a Flying Army of Laser 'Schrodinger's Cats' (livescience.com)
PolygamousRanchKid quotes LiveScience: A laser pulse bounced off a rubidium atom and entered the quantum world -- taking on the weird physics of "Schrodinger's cat." The laser pulses didn't grow whiskers or paws. But they became like the famous quantum-physics thought experiment Schrodinger's cat in an important way: They were large objects that acted like the simultaneously dead-and-alive creatures of subatomic physics -- existing in a limbo between two simultaneous, contradictory states.
"In our experiment, the [laser cat] was sent to the detector immediately, so it was destroyed right after its creation," said Bastian Hacker, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, who worked on the experiment. But it didn't have to be that way, Hacker told Live Science. "An optical state can live forever. So if we had sent the pulse out into the night sky, it could live for billions of years in its [cat-like] state." That longevity is part of what makes these pulses so useful, he added. A long-lived laser cat can survive long-term travel through an optical fiber, making it a good unit of information for a network of quantum computers... In the new experiment, described in a paper published Jan. 14 in the journal Nature Photonics, researchers created laser pulses that are in superposition between two possible quantum states. They called the little pulses "flying optical cat states...."
"Cat states can encode quantum information in a way that allows [us] to detect optical loss and correct for it. Although every optical transmission has losses, the information can be transmitted perfectly."
"In our experiment, the [laser cat] was sent to the detector immediately, so it was destroyed right after its creation," said Bastian Hacker, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, who worked on the experiment. But it didn't have to be that way, Hacker told Live Science. "An optical state can live forever. So if we had sent the pulse out into the night sky, it could live for billions of years in its [cat-like] state." That longevity is part of what makes these pulses so useful, he added. A long-lived laser cat can survive long-term travel through an optical fiber, making it a good unit of information for a network of quantum computers... In the new experiment, described in a paper published Jan. 14 in the journal Nature Photonics, researchers created laser pulses that are in superposition between two possible quantum states. They called the little pulses "flying optical cat states...."
"Cat states can encode quantum information in a way that allows [us] to detect optical loss and correct for it. Although every optical transmission has losses, the information can be transmitted perfectly."
I read the article, and still don't understand a thing. I think it is not because i am so stupid, but because the article has been so dumbed down that it no longer contains any useful information. So, if someone please can explain what this is about, without using a cat or car analogy, please feel free to do so.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
How does this help anything, in practical terms? I mean if you don't know what is was you sent, how does it help to know what it was when someone gets it? If you mention the word entanglement I will hit you in the eye with a bazzillion photons of 'unknown' state.
The cat has jumped the shark.
In what state is the obligatory cat chasing this laser beam?
Have gnu, will travel.
One thing it means (claims...not really tested, but certainly made plausible) is that quantum uncertainty can persist in ways that are macroscopically significant.
To me this is an argument in favor of the EWG multiworld interpretation of quantum physics, but I'm no expert, and others may well see this as an argument in favor of some other interpretation. That I can't see this as favoring the Copenhagen interpretation doesn't mean that someone else can't.
OTOH, one needs to remember that an interpretation is just that, and doesn't in and of itself predict any particular physical realization. This is therefore either consistent with all the existing interpretations (I think it is), or it's inconsistent with all of them. But to me long term stable uncertain states argue against the Copenhagen interpretation. (But, that said, I don't like that interpretation anyway, so I'm biased.)
P.S.: To answer your question more directly, it makes quantum computing at scale much more plausible.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If it's a cat then won't it just ignore you when you want something from it?
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I prefer to think that both the Copenhagen and Many-worlds interpretations are correct.
Schwarzschild's cats are much more interesting...
All I can say is that "Flying Army of Laser 'Schrodinger's Cats" sure sounds cool!
Maybe they can take on the Sharknado.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
God damn. Someone is seriously desperate have others think they understand what is happening here. REALLY pushing the whole "cat" thing. My eyes glazed over at "[laser cat]". Honestly, this just felt...dumb. Also, while the article may specifically discuss it (didn't bother reading it), I feel the summary could have gone ahead and hyperlinked Schrödinger's cat to something like Wikipedia or whatever.
one needs to remember that an interpretation is just that, and doesn't in and of itself predict any particular physical realization.
Superposition isn't an interpretation, it's an experimentally verified fact of nature.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
How can a story that starts out with an army of laser cats turn out to be so disappointing?
An optical state can live forever. So if we had sent the pulse out into the night sky, it could live for billions of years in its [cat-like] state.
As I understand it, an optical pulse travels at the speed of light and is thus not an instant older when it is billions of light years away than it was at the moment it was produced. No optical pulse ever "lives" beyond a single quanta of time. From its point of view, it "lives" along its entire path from production to destruction in the same instant of time. Am I wrong?
I agree. Next they'll replace 'pulse' with 'plush'. And optical fiber with 'hugging'.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Cat5 cable
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But what does it mean? How do you interpret it?
Every interpretation of quantum physics predicts the same experimental results, but the interpretation of them is less clear. And the English translation of the math differs wildly depending on which interpretation you use.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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