Communications of the ACM
Doubling Down on Schrodinger's Cat
A team of Yale scientists created a more exotic type of Schrdingers cat paradox in which the cat lives or dies in two boxes at once.
Credit: Michael S. Helfenbein
The Schrodinger's cat paradox applies the concept of superposition in quantum physics to everyday objects, and a team of Yale University researchers has created a more exotic type of state, in which the cat simultaneously lives or dies in two boxes, to introduce entanglement to the traditional scenario.
Entanglement enables a local observation to change the state of a distant object instantaneously.
The Yale researchers built a device consisting of two three-dimensional microwave cavities and an additional monitoring port, all of which are connected by a superconducting, artificial atom. The "cat" is made of confined microwave light in both cavities.
"This cat...doesn't stay in one box because the quantum state is shared between the two cavities and cannot be described separately," says Yale researcher Chen Wang.
There also could be two small and simple Schrodinger's cats, one in each box, which are entangled.
The research has potential applications in quantum computation because a quantum computer would be able to solve certain problems faster than traditional computers by exploiting superposition and entanglement.
"Generating a cat in two boxes is the first step towards logical operation between two quantum bits in an error-correctible manner," says Yale professor Robert Schoelkopf.
From Yale News
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