2024-06-29 04:00:01
Quantumly entangled photons recently revealed the Earth’s rotation in a groundbreaking experiment by a team led by Philip Walther of the University of Vienna.
This advance opens up new perspectives at the crossroads of quantum mechanics and general relativityexceeding the limits of the sensitivity of sensors based on entanglement.
Optical Sagnac interferometers, known for their unmatched precision, have played a crucial role in measuring rotational velocities for decades. However, interferometers using quantum entanglement promise even greater sensitivity, although their potential has been limited by the delicate nature of entanglement.
The Viennese experiment broke through this barrier by building a giant fiber-optic Sagnac interferometer, capable of maintaining a stable low noise level for several hours. This allowed the detection of pairs of photons high-quality entangled, surpassing the accuracy of previous interferometers by a factor of a thousand.
In a Sagnac interferometer, two particles moving in opposite directions on a closed trajectory reach the starting point at different times. With entangled particles, the effect is amplified, their behavior resembling that of a single particle testing both directions simultaneously and accumulating twice the time delay.
To isolate the Earth’s rotation signal, the researchers split the fiber optical in two equal parts connected by a switch optical. By turning this switch on and off, they were able to neutralize the rotation signal.
This experiment, conducted within the framework of the TURIS research network, demonstrated theinteraction between rotating systems and quantum entanglement with a precision a thousand times higher than previous experiments. This work paves the way for future improvements and new explorations of quantum entanglement in the curvatures of thespace-time.
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