breakthrough research reveals that quantum noise, the random disruptions so far believed to be a menace as they mess with delicate quantum systems, may not be the villain we assumed and sometimes may bring benefits on its way.
At the heart of this discovery is quantum entanglement, a strange phenomenon Einstein once called “spooky action at a distance.” It is a mysterious link that binds particles across space and lies at the heart of quantum physics. Traditionally, quantum noise is seen as the enemy of entangled systems, causing them to lose their entanglement, a phenomenon known as ‘Decoherence’. A new study from researchers at the Raman Research Institute (RRI) and collaborators reveals that the intraparticle form of entanglement (that involves links within a single particle), a less-known cousin of quantum entanglement, is not only more robust in the face of noise, but can also emerge from noise itself.
With a precise mathematical formula to track how this entanglement changes under noise, Researchers at RRI, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, along with collaborators from Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research – Kolkata and University of Calgary, discovered that noise, specifically amplitude damping, not only erases entanglement but also revives it under certain conditions. Even more astonishingly, it can generate entanglement in an initially unentangled state in intraparticle systems. In other words, under the right conditions, noise does not just destroy quantum correlations, but can help build them too.
Prof. Dipankar Home, an expert in the field of Quantum entanglement from Bose Institute, Kolkata, called this work “indeed a breakthrough,” continuing, “It promises to open up uncharted avenues for user-friendly, commercially viable cutting- edge quantum technological applications in the presence of various models of noise/damping using a novel form of entanglement, viz. the entanglement between different properties of a single particle, called intraparticle entanglement.”
This study, which is under the India-Trento Programme on Advanced Research (ITPAR) and partially supported by National Quantum Mission (NQM) of DST, challenges the long-standing assumption on its head: that noise is inevitably the foe of entanglement. It reveals that under certain conditions noise can be an uncharacteristic friend. It creates new avenues for frontier research and innovation technology, implying that the quantum world remains full of hidden surprises, with many of its secrets still waiting to be uncovered.