Quantum telescope

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A quantum telescope is a concept for a telescope aimed at overcoming the diffraction limit of traditional telescopes by exploiting some properties of quantum mechanics, such as entanglement and photon cloning. [1] [2] [3]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black hole</span> Object that has a no-return boundary

A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light and other electromagnetic waves, is capable of possessing enough energy to escape it. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. A black hole has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, but it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantum computing</span> Technology that uses quantum mechanics

A quantum computer is a computer that takes advantage of quantum mechanical phenomena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loop quantum gravity</span> Theory of quantum gravity, merging quantum mechanics and general relativity

Loop quantum gravity (LQG) is a theory of quantum gravity that incorporates matter of the Standard Model into the framework established for the intrinsic quantum gravity case. It is an attempt to develop a quantum theory of gravity based directly on Albert Einstein's geometric formulation rather than the treatment of gravity as a mysterious mechanism (force). As a theory, LQG postulates that the structure of space and time is composed of finite loops woven into an extremely fine fabric or network. These networks of loops are called spin networks. The evolution of a spin network, or spin foam, has a scale on the order of a Planck length, approximately 10−35 meters, and smaller scales are meaningless. Consequently, not just matter, but space itself, prefers an atomic structure.

Hawking radiation is the theoretical thermal black-body radiation released outside a black hole's event horizon. This is counterintuitive because once ordinary electromagnetic radiation is inside the event horizon, it cannot escape. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who developed a theoretical argument for its existence in 1974. Hawking radiation is predicted to be extremely faint and is many orders of magnitude below the current best telescopes' detecting ability.

An axion is a hypothetical elementary particle originally postulated by the Peccei–Quinn theory in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). If axions exist and have low mass within a specific range, they are of interest as a possible component of cold dark matter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MAGIC (telescope)</span> Very-high-energy photon telescope in the Canary Islands, Spain

MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes situated at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, at about 2200 m above sea level. MAGIC detects particle showers released by gamma rays, using the Cherenkov radiation, i.e., faint light radiated by the charged particles in the showers. With a diameter of 17 meters for the reflecting surface, it was the largest in the world before the construction of H.E.S.S. II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High Energy Stereoscopic System</span> Gamma Ray Telescope System in Namibia

High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is a system of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) for the investigation of cosmic gamma rays in the photon energy range of 0.03 to 100 TeV. The acronym was chosen in honour of Victor Hess, who was the first to observe cosmic rays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment</span> Number of quantum physics thought experiments

Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment describes a family of thought experiments in quantum physics proposed by John Archibald Wheeler, with the most prominent among them appearing in 1978 and 1984. These experiments are attempts to decide whether light somehow "senses" the experimental apparatus in the double-slit experiment it travels through, adjusting its behavior to fit by assuming an appropriate determinate state, or whether light remains in an indeterminate state, exhibiting both wave-like and particle-like behavior until measured.

Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) is a finite, symmetry-reduced model of loop quantum gravity (LQG) that predicts a "quantum bridge" between contracting and expanding cosmological branches.

Quantum annealing (QA) is an optimization process for finding the global minimum of a given objective function over a given set of candidate solutions, by a process using quantum fluctuations. Quantum annealing is used mainly for problems where the search space is discrete with many local minima; such as finding the ground state of a spin glass or the traveling salesman problem. The term "quantum annealing" was first proposed in 1988 by B. Apolloni, N. Cesa Bianchi and D. De Falco as a quantum-inspired classical algorithm. It was formulated in its present form by T. Kadowaki and H. Nishimori in 1998 though an imaginary-time variant without quantum coherence had been discussed by A. B. Finnila, M. A. Gomez, C. Sebenik and J. D. Doll in 1994.

Adiabatic quantum computation (AQC) is a form of quantum computing which relies on the adiabatic theorem to perform calculations and is closely related to quantum annealing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Group field theory</span> Quantum field theory with a Lie group base manifold

Group field theory (GFT) is a quantum field theory in which the base manifold is taken to be a Lie group. It is closely related to background independent quantum gravity approaches such as loop quantum gravity, the spin foam formalism and causal dynamical triangulation. It can be shown that its perturbative expansion can be interpreted as spin foams and simplicial pseudo-manifolds (depending on the representation of the fields). Thus, its partition function defines a non-perturbative sum over all simplicial topologies and geometries, giving a path integral formulation of quantum spacetime.

The Bousso bound captures a fundamental relation between quantum information and the geometry of space and time. It appears to be an imprint of a unified theory that combines quantum mechanics with Einstein's general relativity. The study of black hole thermodynamics and the information paradox led to the idea of the holographic principle: the entropy of matter and radiation in a spatial region cannot exceed the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy of the boundary of the region, which is proportional to the boundary area. However, this "spacelike" entropy bound fails in cosmology; for example, it does not hold true in our universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantum Bayesianism</span> Interpretation of quantum mechanics

In physics and the philosophy of physics, quantum Bayesianism is a collection of related approaches to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the most prominent of which is QBism. QBism is an interpretation that takes an agent's actions and experiences as the central concerns of the theory. QBism deals with common questions in the interpretation of quantum theory about the nature of wavefunction superposition, quantum measurement, and entanglement. According to QBism, many, but not all, aspects of the quantum formalism are subjective in nature. For example, in this interpretation, a quantum state is not an element of reality—instead, it represents the degrees of belief an agent has about the possible outcomes of measurements. For this reason, some philosophers of science have deemed QBism a form of anti-realism. The originators of the interpretation disagree with this characterization, proposing instead that the theory more properly aligns with a kind of realism they call "participatory realism", wherein reality consists of more than can be captured by any putative third-person account of it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantum simulator</span> Simulators of quantum mechanical systems

Quantum simulators permit the study of a quantum system in a programmable fashion. In this instance, simulators are special purpose devices designed to provide insight about specific physics problems. Quantum simulators may be contrasted with generally programmable "digital" quantum computers, which would be capable of solving a wider class of quantum problems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fast radio burst</span> Astronomical high energy transient pulse

In radio astronomy, a fast radio burst (FRB) is a transient radio pulse of length ranging from a fraction of a millisecond, for an ultra-fast radio burst, to 3 seconds, caused by some high-energy astrophysical process not yet understood. Astronomers estimate the average FRB releases as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun puts out in three days. While extremely energetic at their source, the strength of the signal reaching Earth has been described as 1,000 times less than from a mobile phone on the Moon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SGR J1745−2900</span>

SGR J1745−2900, or PSR J1745−2900, is the first-discovered magnetar orbiting the black hole Sagittarius A*, in the center of the Milky Way. The magnetar was discovered in 2013 using the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope, the Nancay Decimetric Radio Telescope, and the Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope. The magnetar has a period of 3.76 s and a magnetic flux density of ~ 1010 T (1014 G). The magnetar is 0.33 ly from the central black hole.

IBM Quantum Platform is an online platform allowing public and premium access to cloud-based quantum computing services provided by IBM. This includes access to a set of IBM's prototype quantum processors, a set of tutorials on quantum computation, and access to an interactive textbook. As of February 2021, there are over 20 devices on the service, six of which are freely available for the public. This service can be used to run algorithms and experiments, and explore tutorials and simulations around what might be possible with quantum computing.

Continuous-variable (CV) quantum information is the area of quantum information science that makes use of physical observables, like the strength of an electromagnetic field, whose numerical values belong to continuous intervals. One primary application is quantum computing. In a sense, continuous-variable quantum computation is "analog", while quantum computation using qubits is "digital." In more technical terms, the former makes use of Hilbert spaces that are infinite-dimensional, while the Hilbert spaces for systems comprising collections of qubits are finite-dimensional. One motivation for studying continuous-variable quantum computation is to understand what resources are necessary to make quantum computers more powerful than classical ones.

This glossary of quantum computing is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in quantum computing, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.

References

  1. Kellerer, Aglae (2014-03-26). "Quantum telescopes". Astronomy & Geophysics. 55 (3): 3.28–3.32. arXiv: 1403.6681 . doi:10.1093/astrogeo/atu126.
  2. Popowicz, A.; Pollo, A.; Stebel, T.; Pięta, T.; Kurek, A. R. (2016-03-15). "Quantum telescope: feasibility and constraints". Optics Letters. 41 (6): 1094–1097. arXiv: 1508.04275 . Bibcode:2016OptL...41.1094K. doi:10.1364/OL.41.001094. ISSN   1539-4794. PMID   26977642. S2CID   207350044.
  3. "Quantum telescope could make giant mirrors obsolete". Physics World. 2014-04-29. Retrieved 2019-07-10.