Quantum entanglement detected in top quark
Artistic visualisation of quantum entanglement in top-quarks. Image copyright CERN
School of Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences discover more about quantum entanglement.
A team of international scientists working on the ATLAS experiment, including experts from the University of Adelaide, has taken a major step forward in discovering more about quantum entanglement, one of the key properties underlying quantum physics.
“Entanglement is one of the properties described by quantum physics, and is one of the properties that scientists and engineers are trying to exploit to create new technologies, such as quantum computing,” said Professor Paul Jackson, School of Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences and Deputy Dean, Research within the Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology.
“The new development from the ATLAS experiment is that entanglement has been seen in pairs of particles called top quarks, where there are large amounts of energy in a very small space.”
Quantum entanglement is a fascinating feature of quantum physics – the theory of the very small. If two particles are quantum-entangled, the state of one particle is tied to that of the other, no matter how far apart the particles are.
Professor Jackson is the National Contact Physicist for Australia on the ATLAS experiment, the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment, at the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
Professor Jackson and his colleagues from around the world test the fundamental forces of nature and search for new particles and phenomena. They analyse data from the ATLAS experiment in their search for a better understanding of how particles behave and how this can be applied.