Although the concept of the quantum has invaded sectors completely far from science and is used indiscriminately to refer to something complex … the reality is that it is: it is about A complex, but scientific concept. You can’t know the position of a particle and its speed at the same time.
One of the best Metaphors to explain the principle of uncertainty that supports the quantum world is soap pomp. Imagine that you want to measure the temperature of a very delicate soap pomp with great precision.
The pomp is our quantum particle, the act of measuring temperature is observation, the study of the particle and the final result is uncertainty: to measure the temperature, you have to touch the pomp with a thermometer. At the moment the thermometer plays the pomp to obtain its temperature (measure the position), The strength of contact or thermal disturbance cause the pomp to exploit or drastically change its movement (the moment or speed is altered).
In this way, the act of measuring the temperature ruined the existence of the pomp or altered its speed. Therefore, You cannot know simultaneously where it is (or was) the pomp and how fast it moved at the same time.
It is not a problem of having better instruments. It is a fundamental law of nature at quantum level: To obtain information about a property (such as position), inevitably injects energy or disturbances both to the system that you alter unpredictably Another linked property (like the moment).
Fortunately, science advances and Experts are redefining quantum uncertainty to avoid restriction imposed by the famous uncertainty principle of Heisenberg.
A new study, published in Science, opens the doors to the development of ultra -precise quantum sensors, which could optimize navigation into environments Where GPS does not work, such as submarines, underground displacements or space flights. It can help improve the ability to create images, monitor gravitational materials and systems or investigate fundamental physics.
“What we have done – explains the leader of the study, Tingrei Tan – is LLear this quantum uncertainty to places that do not interest us (great and abrupt jumps in position and moment that do matter to us can be measured more accurately. ”
Physicists also used the analogy of a clock to explain their findings. Imagine a normal clock with two hands: that of the hour and that of the minutes. Now imagine that the clock has only one hands. If it is the time, you can know what time it is and approximately what minute, but the reading of the minutes will be very imprecise.
If the clock only has the minutes, you can read the minutes very precisely, but The notion of the general context is lost, specifically, the time it is. This modular measurement sacrifices part of the global information in exchange for a much more precise detail, according to a statement.
“When applying this strategy in quantum systems, we can measure the changes both in the position and at the time of a particle with much more precision – adds the co -author of the study, Christophe Valahu -. We renounce global information, but we gain the ability to detect tiny changes with unprecedented sensitivity. ”
Thanks to this, the team of Tan used the detection protocol using the tiny vibratory movement of a trapped ion, the quantum equivalent of a pendulum. They prepared the ion in “grid states”, a type of quantum status originally developed for quantum computing with errors correction. With this, they showed that both the position and the moment can be measured together with a precision that exceeds the “standard quantum limit”, The maximum attainable using only classic sensors.
Although it is still in the laboratory phase, the experiment demonstrates a new framework for future detection technologies oriented to the measurement of tiny signals. Instead of replacing existing approaches, add a complementary tool to quantum detection tools.