Ultracold watches could reveal how quantum physics changes time

What does the time to truly quantum object look like? The world’s best watches may soon be able to answer this question, testing that time can extend and move in the quantum empire and allowing us to question the unexplored fields of physics.

The idea that time can change or expand, comes from a special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein. Einstein proved to be the object approaching the speed of light, it seems that time works more slowly than for a stationary observer. He expanded this idea with his general theory of relativity, showing that the gravity field has the same timely exhausting effect. Igor Pikovski At the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and his colleagues, they wanted to understand if anything like that could happen in a time in the microscopic quantum world, measured by an ultra -ion with an ultra -ion.

“Every experiment that we need to go always feels something like a classic time, a time that has nothing to do with quantum mechanics,” Pikovski says. “We realized that there was a regime in which this description just fails with ion watches,” he says.

Such watches are made of thousands of ions that cool to the temperature near the absolute zero so that the lasers hit it. At these extreme temperatures, quantum conditions of ions and electrons within them can be very accurately controlled by electromagnetic forces. Accordingly, the ticks of ionic watches are set by these electrons that repeatedly oscillate between two specific quantum conditions.

Because their work dictates the laws of quantum mechanics, these watches were the perfect placement for Pikovski and his colleagues to investigate how relativistic and quantum effects can be mixed to influence the clock ticks. Pikovski says researchers have now determined several cases where this should happen.

One example stems from the fact of quantum physics does not sin nothing. Instead of standing absolutely calm and frozen, even at extremely low temperatures, quantum items must vary, randomly obtaining or loss of energy. The team calculations showed that this fluctuation could expand the measurement of the clock time. The effect would be very small, but it is very likely to be visible with existing experiments with ionic tact.

Researchers also mathematically modeled what would happen if the ION Insi “squeeze” themselves to produce a “superposition” of several quantum conditions. They found that the clock ticking, as established by electrons in ions, would be inextricably connected to the movement of the ion itself – the states of ions and electrons would become quantized. “Usually in experiments, you have to play tricks to plug in engineers. Here is a fascinating thing to come to whether you want it or not,” says a team member Christian dream at the Colorado State University.

Pikovski says that intuitively makes sense that the quantum object in the superposition of the state could not only experience one sense of time, but the effect was never noticed in the experiment. That should be possible in the near future, he says.

A member of the team Gabriel Sorci The Stevens Institute of Technology says that the next step is to add another key ingredient in modern physics – gravity. Ultracold watches can already detect time dilatation due to the minimum changes in the strength of the gravitational withdrawal of the Earth, for example, when even a few millimeters are raised, but exactly to mix this effect with the inherent quantum of the clock open question.

“I think this is actually quite reasonable for the technology we currently have,” he says David Hume at the American National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado. He says that the biggest challenge would be to prevent small disturbance from the environment of the clock that overcome the effects that the Pikovski team hinted at. If they are successful, such experiments would allow researchers to explore the phenomena of physics that they have never been able to before, although quantum theory and theory of special relativity are two pillars that have long held much of contemporary physics, he says.

“Experiments like this are exciting because they force these theories to face each other in a domain where there is a chance that we can learn something new,” he says Alexander Smith at Saint Anselm College, New Hampshire.