Speaker 1: Welcome to the coret Side Quantum Physics podcast, an exploration
Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
Speaker 2: I want you to try something with me today. It's
Speaker 2: a little mental exercise to get us started.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm in.
Speaker 2: I want you to close your eyes seriously, unless you are,
Speaker 2: you know, currently operating heavy machinery or driving down the freeway.
Speaker 2: Just close them for a second.
Speaker 3: Safety first, please, But if you're safe, go for it
Speaker 3: right exactly.
Speaker 2: So picture your warning routine. You know the drill. You
Speaker 2: walk into that coffee shop you love.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, I can see it now.
Speaker 2: You know the one I'm talking about. It's always just
Speaker 2: a little bit too loud. The grinder is going in
Speaker 2: the background, and it smells like roasted beans and maybe
Speaker 2: a hint of rain if it's a gloomy day.
Speaker 3: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: You walk up to the counter and you order a latte.
Speaker 3: The classic choice, very good.
Speaker 2: The classic, and the barista who clearly takes their craft
Speaker 2: very very seriously.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the one with the wax mustache and the
Speaker 3: denim aper.
Speaker 2: That's the one. The whole vibe. They pour that steamed
Speaker 2: milk into the dark espresso and they do that specific
Speaker 2: little wrist flick at the end. You know what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 3: The poor It's mesmerizing to watch it, really is it is.
Speaker 2: And boom there it is a perfect tulip pattern in
Speaker 2: the foam, crisp white lines against the dark coffee. It's symmetry,
Speaker 2: it's structure.
Speaker 3: It's a little piece of art that you are about
Speaker 3: to destroy.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It is beautiful and it's fleeting, so fleeting. Right
Speaker 2: now here is the experiment. Keep your eyes closed. Imagine
Speaker 2: taking that cup but it's hot in your hand and
Speaker 2: just giving it a violent swirl. Okay, I mean really
Speaker 2: shake it, agitate the whole thing. What happens to the tulip.
Speaker 3: Well, obviously it's obliterated. You don't have a tulip anymore.
Speaker 3: You have a beige, frothy mess. The milk mixes with
Speaker 3: the coffee, the pattern dissolves, and you are left with
Speaker 3: a tasty, but you know, visually boring drink.
Speaker 2: Right. That is what our intuition tells us. That is
Speaker 2: what common sense tells us. That is what's seeing the
Speaker 2: world every day tells us things mix, things mix, order
Speaker 2: turns into chaos. The tulip does not survive the swirl.
Speaker 2: It can't.
Speaker 3: It's the law of the universe, or at least the
Speaker 3: law of the kitchen table.
Speaker 2: What if I told you that in the quantum world,
Speaker 2: that logic just got completely flipped on its head.
Speaker 3: And this is where we leave the kitchen table behind.
Speaker 2: This is where it gets weird. Imagine you swirl that cup,
Speaker 2: you shake it, you tap it, you disturb it, and
Speaker 2: you look down and the tulip is still there. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: perfectly crisp every petal, define. It refuses to mix, it
Speaker 2: refuses to blend, It just stays.
Speaker 3: That is a perfect visualization of what we were talking
Speaker 3: about today. It sounds like magic or maybe a glitch
Speaker 3: in the simulation, right, it does. But it's actually a
Speaker 3: major breakthrough in physics known as statistical localization.
Speaker 2: And this isn't science fiction. This isn't a theory from
Speaker 2: fifty years ago that we're digging up. This is coming
Speaker 2: directly from a study published literally yesterday, February eighteenth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six. That's brand new, brand new, in the journal
Speaker 2: Nature Physics, and it's coming out of Duke University.
Speaker 3: That's right. It's fresh research and it is challenging some
Speaker 3: of our most i mean our most fundamental assumptions about
Speaker 3: how matter behaves when you start looking really really closely
Speaker 3: at it.
Speaker 2: So today, that's our whole journey. We are going to
Speaker 2: unpack how a team of scientists use a quantum simulator,
Speaker 2: which by the way, sounds as something straight out of
Speaker 2: a sci fi movie, it really does to essentially freeze
Speaker 2: the state of matter in a way that just shouldn't
Speaker 2: be possible.
Speaker 3: And we need to be clear from the top. This
Speaker 3: isn't just a cool party trick for atoms. This isn't
Speaker 3: just hey, look at this weird thing we found. This
Speaker 3: is a big deal. It's potentially the key to solving
Speaker 3: one of the biggest bottlenecks in quantum computing, which is
Speaker 3: memory storage.
Speaker 2: And if that wasn't enough, it might even help us
Speaker 2: understand the fundamental forces that hold the entire universe together.
Speaker 3: It connects the very small to the very big. It's
Speaker 3: the bridge between the micro and the macro.
Speaker 2: So grab your coffee, don't swirl it too hard or
Speaker 2: it maybe do. Just to prove physics still works in
Speaker 2: your kitchen, and let's get into it.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: To understand why this frozen latte effect is so profoundly weird,
Speaker 2: we first have to understand what's supposed to happen. You
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier that the tulip disappearing is obvious. Why is that?
Speaker 2: What is the physics behind the beige mess?
Speaker 3: So in the classical world, the world we live in
Speaker 3: the world of coffee cups and tables and cars, we
Speaker 3: are governed by a concept called thermalization.
Speaker 2: Thermalization, Okay, let's unpack that word. It sounds like it
Speaker 2: has something to do with heat.
Speaker 3: It does, but it's really about equilibrium, about things evening out.
Speaker 3: Think about dropping a single drop of dark blue ink
Speaker 3: into a glass of clear water.
Speaker 2: Okay, when you.
Speaker 3: First drop it in, for that first split second, it's
Speaker 3: a tight little ball of color. It has a specific location.
Speaker 3: It's organized right.
Speaker 2: You can point to it and say the ink is
Speaker 2: right there exactly.
Speaker 3: But if you walk away and come back in, say
Speaker 3: ten minutes, what do you see.
Speaker 2: The water is just light blue. It's all spread out.
Speaker 2: You can't tell where the drop landed anymore. The blob
Speaker 2: is totally gone.
Speaker 3: Precisely, the ink molecules have moved. They've gone from an
Speaker 3: area of high concentration that initial drop, to an area
Speaker 3: of low concentration the rest of the water they've spread
Speaker 3: out until everything.
Speaker 2: Is equal homogenized.
Speaker 3: That is equilibrium, and that process is thermalization.
Speaker 2: It's the same with temperature, right, that's the thermal part
Speaker 2: of the word.
Speaker 3: Yes. The source material uses this great simple example of
Speaker 3: a glass of ice water sitting on your kitchen table.
Speaker 3: You leave it there, right, The heat from the room
Speaker 3: transfers to the glass, the ice melts, the water warms up.
Speaker 3: Eventually the water, the glass, and the air in the
Speaker 3: room are all roughly the same temperature. They've reached equilibrium.
Speaker 2: Everything wants to settle down, Everything wants to mix. It's
Speaker 2: like the universe has this deep seated hatred of distinct things.
Speaker 2: It wants everything to be a lukewarm soup.
Speaker 3: That's a pretty good way to put it. This is
Speaker 3: all rooted in energy transport, energy moves. It flows from
Speaker 3: hot to cold, from organized to disorganized. In classical physics,
Speaker 3: systems naturally evolve toward this state of equilibrium.
Speaker 2: It's predictable. It's what we see every single day. Honestly,
Speaker 2: it's kind of comforting. Isn't it.
Speaker 3: It is comforting. We know that if we put something
Speaker 3: hot next to something cold, they'll meet in the middle.
Speaker 3: It makes sense.
Speaker 2: It's the arrow of time in a way. You can't
Speaker 2: unmix the ink. You can't unmelt the ice. No, once
Speaker 2: the latte is beige, you can't just shake it and
Speaker 2: get a perfect tool.
Speaker 3: Look back exactly. It's an irreversible process.
Speaker 2: But here comes the butt. I knew there was a
Speaker 2: butt coming.
Speaker 3: But this is not always how things behave. When you
Speaker 3: zoom in way way into the atomic and subatomic scales,
Speaker 3: the quantum realm, the.
Speaker 2: Quantum realm where the rules are and the points don't matter,
Speaker 2: or rather, the points matter a lot, but the rules
Speaker 2: are completely different from our intuition.
Speaker 3: They are definitely different. At this scale, we encounter a
Speaker 3: phenomenon called localization localization.
Speaker 2: Okay, so contrast that with thermalization. For me, if thermalization
Speaker 2: is all about mixing and spreading.
Speaker 3: Out, localization is the opposite. It's about staying put. So
Speaker 3: if thermalization is the ink spreading out to fill the
Speaker 3: entire glass, localization is the ink drop hitting the water
Speaker 3: and just staying there, staying as a drop, as a
Speaker 3: perfect tight little blue sphere, just suspended in the clear water.
Speaker 2: Why is there something holding it there?
Speaker 3: That's the weird part. Nothing is holding it. There are
Speaker 3: no walls keeping it there. It just doesn't spread.
Speaker 2: It feels wrong, like physically viscerally wrong. My brain doesn't
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: It feels very wrong. The source describes it as a
Speaker 3: situation where equilibrium spreading does not occur, even with nothing
Speaker 3: obviously preventing it.
Speaker 2: So it's just stubborn. The ink is just refue using
Speaker 2: to participate in the laws of physics as we know.
Speaker 3: Them in a way. Yes, the energy transport we talked
Speaker 3: about before, it just stops. Yeah, the system retains a
Speaker 3: memory of its original state the ink drop forever, instead
Speaker 3: of forgetting it and becoming a uniform mix.
Speaker 2: It remembers where it started.
Speaker 3: It remembers it doesn't thermalize.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's the baseline weirdness of quantum localization. This
Speaker 2: isn't a brand new idea, right. Physicists have known about
Speaker 2: this concept for a little while.
Speaker 3: Correct. We've known about standard localization often it's called Anderson
Speaker 3: localization for decades. Usually happens when there's a lot of
Speaker 3: disorder or sort of dirt in a system that ends
Speaker 3: up trapping the particles.
Speaker 2: Like potholes in a road that stop traffic.
Speaker 3: That's a great analogy. Yeah, but this new paper from
Speaker 3: Duke is talking about something even more specific and frankly
Speaker 3: even weirder, isn't it. It's statistical localization.
Speaker 2: Right, and that's the new discovery.
Speaker 3: Yes, And to understand that, we really need to look
Speaker 3: at the experiment itself, because they didn't just stumble upon this.
Speaker 3: They had to build a very very complex machine to
Speaker 3: even see it.
Speaker 2: This wasn't something they just found lying around in nature.
Speaker 2: They had to engineer it precisely. Let's talk about the team.
Speaker 2: We have huonkin Low, she's an assistant professor of electrical
Speaker 2: and computer engineering and physics at Duke.
Speaker 3: And her colleagues, including Natalie Palko, who will definitely hear
Speaker 3: about later when we get to the theory side of things.
Speaker 3: It's a multidisciplinary effort, which is key here.
Speaker 2: And they build something called a neutral atom quantum simulator. Now,
Speaker 2: when I hear simulator, I'm thinking of software. I'm thinking
Speaker 2: of like the SIMS or a flight simulator on a PC. Right,
Speaker 2: But that's not what this is at all, is No,
Speaker 2: not at all.
Speaker 3: This is a piece of hardware. The source material calls
Speaker 3: it a tabletop setup. But don't let that fool you
Speaker 3: into thinking it's simple. It's incredibly sophisticated.
Speaker 2: So it's not code.
Speaker 3: It's not code. We aren't simulating quantum mechanics using ones
Speaker 3: and zeros on a normal chip. We are using actual
Speaker 3: quantum objects to simulate other quantum objects.
Speaker 2: So it's like using legos to SIMI light how bricks work,
Speaker 2: rather than drawing bricks on a computer screen.
Speaker 3: That's a perfect analogy. They are building a physical model
Speaker 3: of the physics they want to study.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what are the legos in this case? What
Speaker 2: are the actual building blocks?
Speaker 3: They used atoms of rubidium.
Speaker 2: Rubidium element thirty seven on the periodic table.
Speaker 3: That's the one, and they arrange these rubidium atoms into
Speaker 3: a one dimensional chain. So I want you to imagine
Speaker 3: a string of pearls. But the pearls are individual atoms
Speaker 3: and they're floating in a vacuum.
Speaker 2: Okay, string of atomic pearls. But how do you keep
Speaker 2: an atom from just flying away? You can't exactly glue
Speaker 2: it down. Atoms are wiggly little things.
Speaker 3: You use light. That's the amazing part. They used highly
Speaker 3: focused lasers they're often called optical tweezers to tightly control
Speaker 3: the position of each individual atom.
Speaker 2: Optical tweezers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you have this row of atoms, each one
Speaker 3: pinned in placed by its own beam of light.
Speaker 2: That is just it always blows my mind that we
Speaker 2: can actually do that here. Let me just hold this
Speaker 2: single atom for you with a flashlight. It sounds like
Speaker 2: something for Star Trek.
Speaker 3: It really is remarkable technology. The source highlights this high
Speaker 3: degree of quantum engineering. They are manipulating the fundamental building
Speaker 3: blocks of matter with incredible, almost unbelievable precision.
Speaker 2: But holding them in place is just step one, just
Speaker 2: step one.
Speaker 3: Step two is getting them to interact with each other.
Speaker 2: Right, because a frozen line of atoms doesn't tell you
Speaker 2: much about mixing if they aren't even allowed to talk
Speaker 2: to each other exactly.
Speaker 3: So, they used another laser to excite the atom's electrons.
Speaker 2: Excite them How what does that mean? To excite an electron?
Speaker 3: It means they use the laser's energy to push the
Speaker 3: electron into a higher energy state, a different orbit around
Speaker 3: the nucleus. When they do this, it causes the atom's
Speaker 3: behaviors to become intertwined.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 3: In quantum terms, we're dealing with things like entanglement and interaction.
Speaker 3: The atoms stop acting like solitary individuals and they start
Speaker 3: acting like a collective system. Their fates are linked.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we have a chain of rubidium atoms. They
Speaker 2: are pinned in place by l They are excited at
Speaker 2: interacting with each other. This is the choreography that the
Speaker 2: source talks about.
Speaker 3: Yes, the researchers set up this very specific initial state,
Speaker 3: and this is like drawing the tulip in the latte
Speaker 3: from They positioned everything perfectly, they set the energy levels
Speaker 3: just so, and then then they let it go. They
Speaker 3: let it go, They let the system run.
Speaker 2: They introduced the squirrel exactly.
Speaker 3: They allowed the engineered quantum evolution to happen. They released
Speaker 3: the atoms from that initial rigid control just enough to
Speaker 3: see what they would do. Would they thermalize? Would they mix?
Speaker 2: Would the ink spread?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Would the tulip dissolve? That's the moment of truth.
Speaker 3: That was the big question. And remember, in a normal system,
Speaker 3: or even in many quantum systems, you would absolutely expect
Speaker 3: interaction to lead to mixing. If I'm an excited atom,
Speaker 3: and I bump into my neighbor. I transfer some energy.
Speaker 3: That neighbor bumps into the next one. Eventually the energy
Speaker 3: is spread all over the place.
Speaker 2: Everything should average out.
Speaker 3: It should, but that's not what happened. No, they observed
Speaker 3: statistical localization.
Speaker 2: So did the atoms mix like the coffee foam.
Speaker 3: They did not. They stayed put, or rather their state
Speaker 3: stayed put.
Speaker 2: Almost all states are frozen. That's the quote from Wonky
Speaker 2: and Low.
Speaker 3: Almost all states are frozen. It's such a powerful and
Speaker 3: surprising statement. It defies the expectation of chaos.
Speaker 2: I want to dig into how this is different from
Speaker 2: that normal localization you mentioned earlier, said that was like
Speaker 2: potholes in the road. How is statistical localization different because
Speaker 2: the source makes a pretty specific and important distinction here.
Speaker 3: This is a nuanced but really crucial point that Low
Speaker 3: makes in the paper. In the usual form of localization
Speaker 3: that Anderson localization with the potholes, the properties of the
Speaker 3: system are pinned to a particular site, like.
Speaker 2: A specific location in space. So atom A belongs in
Speaker 2: seat one, atomy is in C two, and they can't
Speaker 2: move right.
Speaker 3: Think of it like a traffic gym where every single
Speaker 3: car is stuck exactly where it is. Nothing moves at all.
Speaker 3: The disorder in the road, the potholes, prevents any movement.
Speaker 3: You look at the GPS and that car is at
Speaker 3: the same co ordinate for an hour.
Speaker 2: Okay, total gridlock, every car for itself stuck in place.
Speaker 3: But in statistical localization it's different. And this is the
Speaker 3: mind bending part. The quote from the paper is here
Speaker 3: we see localization, even though the conserved properties are rather
Speaker 3: spread out.
Speaker 2: Spread out, but localized. That sounds like a contradiction. How
Speaker 2: can something be spread out and frozen at the same time.
Speaker 3: It does sound like a paradox, it doesn't it. Let's
Speaker 3: go back to the traffic jam analogy. In the old model,
Speaker 3: every car is stuck on the highway completely alone. In
Speaker 3: this new state, it's more like the cars might be
Speaker 3: able to drive around a little bit, maybe they can
Speaker 3: swap lanes with the cars right next to them, but
Speaker 3: they can never leave their specific little group of cars.
Speaker 3: The group itself is frozen in terms of its overall configuration,
Speaker 3: even if there's some internal movement.
Speaker 2: So it's not that every single atom is glued to
Speaker 2: a specific coordinate. It's that the pattern. The relationship between
Speaker 2: the atoms is.
Speaker 3: What's frozen exactly. The overall state is preserved. The source
Speaker 3: explains that this was actually theorized back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: The Fear predicted that in certain quantum systems you would
Speaker 3: find subsets of quantum states are connected to each other
Speaker 3: and otherwise remain disjointed from all other quantum states.
Speaker 2: Disjointed. That's a really key word here.
Speaker 3: It is. Imagine a big cocktail party. Usually everyone mingles.
Speaker 3: After an hour, you've probably talked to a bunch of
Speaker 3: different people. The room has mixed. That's thermalization.
Speaker 2: Okay, the room is buzzing, everyone is meeting new people,
Speaker 2: sharing information exactly.
Speaker 3: In this system, it's like the party immediately splits into
Speaker 3: tiny separate clicks. The people in click A talk to
Speaker 3: each other furiously. They're interacting, they're sharing energy, but only
Speaker 3: with each other, and they absolutely completely ignore click B,
Speaker 3: click C and.
Speaker 2: Click b and clickbe ignores everyone else.
Speaker 3: Too, everyone else. The room never mixes. The clicks remain disjointed.
Speaker 3: They form these little isolated islands.
Speaker 2: So the system is fragmented. It shatters into peace that
Speaker 2: don't communicate.
Speaker 3: Yes, the technical term is a fragmented state space. And
Speaker 3: because these fragments don't talk to each other, the information
Speaker 3: that's contained within them doesn't leak out, doesn't dissipate into
Speaker 3: the rest of the system. It's protected.
Speaker 2: So if we bring this all the way back to
Speaker 2: the latte, if my latte had statistical localization, the milk
Speaker 2: molecules might be dancing around with other milk molecules in
Speaker 2: their own little cleek, right, but they refuse to acknowledge
Speaker 2: the existence of the coffee molecules next to them.
Speaker 3: Roughly speaking, yes, that's a great way to think about it.
Speaker 3: The tulip pattern is made of milk. If the milk
Speaker 3: molecules refuse to integrate with the coffee molecules, the tulip
Speaker 3: pattern stays. Even if you swirl the cup. The swirling
Speaker 3: moves the whole liquid around, but the internal separation remains.
Speaker 3: The cleek's hold strong.
Speaker 2: Low calls is very, very weird, and I have to
Speaker 2: agree with her.
Speaker 3: And she's right too, she says, in this imaginary example,
Speaker 3: we would have expected the elements to mix together to
Speaker 3: reach equilibrium, and yet we still some how see localization.
Speaker 3: It's a genuine surprise.
Speaker 2: It's weird, but she also says it could be a
Speaker 2: powerful feature, And this brings us to the really important
Speaker 2: part of this whole discussion, the so what why do
Speaker 2: we care if Adam's form clicks? Why does it matter
Speaker 2: if my hypothetical quantum latte doesn't mix well.
Speaker 3: The first big application, and maybe the most immediate one,
Speaker 3: is the holy grail of modern technology quantum computing.
Speaker 2: Right. We hear about quantum computers all the time. They're
Speaker 2: supposed to be faster, smarter, solve impossible problems, but they're
Speaker 2: also incredibly fragile, aren't they? That's the catch.
Speaker 3: Incredibly the biggest problem, the single biggest obstacle in building
Speaker 3: a useful, large scale quantum computer is something called decohuans.
Speaker 2: Which is basically the system just falling apart.
Speaker 3: It's the coffee mixing, it's thermalization. Quantum states, the quibits
Speaker 3: that do the computing are ridiculously delicate. Any little bit
Speaker 3: of noise from the environment, a tiny change in temperature,
Speaker 3: or a stray electromagnetic field, even the simple passage of
Speaker 3: time causes the quantum information to degrade.
Speaker 2: It leaks out, It leaks out.
Speaker 3: It thermalizes, it turns into that beige uniform mess ah,
Speaker 3: and when your information turns into a beige mess, you've
Speaker 3: lost your data. Your calculation is completely ruined.
Speaker 2: So if you want a quantum computer to actually work
Speaker 2: for more than a fraction of a second, you need
Speaker 2: a way to keep the ink blue and the water clear.
Speaker 3: You need to preserve the state precisely. You need a
Speaker 3: way to store information that is, and this is a
Speaker 3: quote from the paper robust to unpredictable surroundings. You need
Speaker 3: a memory system that fights back against entropy.
Speaker 2: And statistical localization offers a path to that.
Speaker 3: It offers a very exciting pathway. Low says, its implications
Speaker 3: for robustly storing information in a quantum system are quite exciting.
Speaker 3: Think about it. If you can encode your data, your
Speaker 3: ones and zeros, into these frozen states, into these disjointed fragments.
Speaker 2: Then they're naturally protected.
Speaker 3: They're naturally protected. Environment can't mess them up as easily
Speaker 3: because they refuse to mix, they refuse to listen to
Speaker 3: the outside noise because.
Speaker 2: They're in their own little clique YEA, ignoring everyone else.
Speaker 3: They're in their click. The system naturally protects the information.
Speaker 3: It's like having a hard drive that automatically rejects any
Speaker 3: attempt to corrupt the files. It isolates the data in
Speaker 3: these little protective quantum bubbles.
Speaker 2: That's huge. I mean the source mentions that we're trying
Speaker 2: to move from these small simulators with a anful equivots
Speaker 2: to larger quantum computers that harness thousands of them.
Speaker 3: Right, And as you scale up, the noise problem gets
Speaker 3: exponentially worse. You have more atoms, more interactions, more chances
Speaker 3: for things to go wrong. Finding a mechanism that inherently
Speaker 3: resists the mixing without you having to constantly fight to
Speaker 3: keep it separate with complicated error correction is a game changer.
Speaker 2: It's like finding a material that's naturally fireproof instead of
Speaker 2: having to constantly spray it with a fire hose.
Speaker 3: That's a perfect analogy. It builds the protection right into
Speaker 3: the fabric of the system.
Speaker 2: So reason number one this matters better more stable quantum memory.
Speaker 2: That alone would be enough to call this a major breakthrough.
Speaker 2: But there's a second reason this matters, and it gets
Speaker 2: a little more causal.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is where it gets really fundamental. This connects
Speaker 3: to the work of Natalie Culco, the assistant professor of
Speaker 3: physics at Duke who was also on the study. It
Speaker 3: turns out this experiment wasn't just about building a better
Speaker 3: memory chip. It was also simulating a very specific and
Speaker 3: very important kind of theory called lattice gauge theory.
Speaker 2: Lattice gauge theory that sounds intense. I feel like I
Speaker 2: need a degree just to say that sentence. What on
Speaker 2: earth is that?
Speaker 3: Kalco describes it as the language that we use to
Speaker 3: describe three of the four fundamental forces in nature.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just the building blocks of reality, No big deal, right,
Speaker 2: just the instruction manual for.
Speaker 3: The universe pretty much. We use these theories to understand
Speaker 3: the strong nuclear force which holds atoms together, the weak
Speaker 3: nuclear force, which governs radioactive decay and electromagnetism, everything from
Speaker 3: the nuclei of atoms to the environments inside particle colliders
Speaker 3: or weird astrophysical anomalies.
Speaker 2: So typically, physicists use massive supercomputers to crunch the numbers
Speaker 2: on these theories and make predictions.
Speaker 3: They try to, but Calco points out a major major problem.
Speaker 3: Calculating the elaborate predictions embedded in these theories is exceedingly costly,
Speaker 3: if possible at all. On classical computers.
Speaker 2: Why is that? Is the math just too hard? We
Speaker 2: have some unbelievably powerful supercomputers these days.
Speaker 3: It's not just that it's hard, it's that it is
Speaker 3: exponentially complex. The number of variables you have to track
Speaker 3: just explodes. Trying to simulate the interaction of sub atomic
Speaker 3: particles on a classical binary computer one that uses just
Speaker 3: ones and zeros is incredibly inefficient.
Speaker 2: It's the wrong tool for the job.
Speaker 3: It's like trying to simulate a hurricane using an abacus.
Speaker 3: You run out of computing power almost immediately.
Speaker 2: So enter the quantum simulator, right.
Speaker 3: And this is the genius of it. Instead of trying
Speaker 3: to calculate what the atoms would do using a formula,
Speaker 3: they built a system out of atoms and watched what
Speaker 3: they did do.
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate modeling tool. It's analog. It's like using
Speaker 2: a little wave pool to study how waves work, instead
Speaker 2: of writing out a bunch of complex fluid dynamics equations.
Speaker 3: Exactly and here is the beautiful connection. It turns out
Speaker 3: that fragmented state spaces, those frozen disjointed cliques we've been
Speaker 3: talking about, are a key feature of these gauge theories.
Speaker 2: That's interesting so the weirdness of the frozen latte isn't
Speaker 2: just a quirk of this one experiment. It's actually a
Speaker 2: feature of the fundamental laws of physics.
Speaker 3: That's the punchline. The experiment successfully mimiced the math of
Speaker 3: the universe. The paper specifically says they used a U
Speaker 3: one lattice gauge theory in a Rideberg simulator.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a lot of jargon in there. You one
Speaker 2: lattice gauge theory.
Speaker 3: I know it's a mouthful, but essentially it's a specific
Speaker 3: mathematical framework that describes how fields like electric fields interact
Speaker 3: with matter at a fundamental level. The truly significant thing
Speaker 3: is that they proved this type of simulator can act
Speaker 3: as a laboratory for sub atomic physics.
Speaker 2: We can study things that are too complex for our
Speaker 2: best supercomputers.
Speaker 3: By creating them on a tabletop in a lab in
Speaker 3: North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Kilko calls it an encouraging step toward a highly anticipated
Speaker 2: application of quantum computing for sub atomic physics.
Speaker 3: It opens a door that was closed if we want
Speaker 3: to understand how quarks bind together to form protons and neutrons,
Speaker 3: or what happens inside the core of a neutron star.
Speaker 3: We might not be able to calculate it on a
Speaker 3: standard computer, but we might be able to build a
Speaker 3: model of it using rubidium atoms and lasers, observe the
Speaker 3: statistical localization and say, uh huh, that's how it works.
Speaker 2: It's really bridging two completely different worlds. You've got the
Speaker 2: engineers trying to build better computers for the future, and
Speaker 2: you've got the theoretical physicists trying to understand the fabric
Speaker 2: of reality itself, and this one experiment helps both of
Speaker 2: them at the same time.
Speaker 3: That's the beauty of it. The same phenomenon, this bizarre
Speaker 3: refusal to mix solves the engineer's very practical memory problem
Speaker 3: and validates the physicists very abstract theory.
Speaker 2: I want to step back and just look at the
Speaker 2: big picture here for a minute. We started with a
Speaker 2: simple cup of coffee. We ended up with the fundamental
Speaker 2: forces of the universe.
Speaker 3: It's quite a trip, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It really is the source material mentions that this research
Speaker 2: could help probe questions about unusual material properties. What does
Speaker 2: that look like in the real world? What are we
Speaker 2: talking about here?
Speaker 3: Well, we're entering an era of what people call novel
Speaker 3: quantum materials. We are discovering and creating states of matter
Speaker 3: that just don't exist in nature, things like high temperature superconductors, superfluids,
Speaker 3: maybe even time crystals. Okay, statistical localization suggests there could
Speaker 3: be materials that exist in a perpetual state of non equilibrium.
Speaker 2: A material that never settles down, a material that stays
Speaker 2: excited forever, or a material.
Speaker 3: That conducts energy in very specific, choreographed ways rather than
Speaker 3: just letting it spread out randomly. As he imagine a
Speaker 3: wire that doesn't heat up when you pass electricity through
Speaker 3: it because the electrons refuse to thermalize with the metal lattice.
Speaker 2: That would change electronics forever. No more overheating phones, no
Speaker 2: more fans in our laptops.
Speaker 3: Potentially, it's speculative at this point of course, but that's
Speaker 3: where this kind of basic research leads. It changes the
Speaker 3: rule book of what materials are even capable of doing.
Speaker 2: And it all comes back to that initial surprise, the weirdness.
Speaker 3: Low said it best in that quote, that is very,
Speaker 3: very weird, but it could be a powerful feature.
Speaker 2: I love that attitude. In science, weird usually means we
Speaker 2: found something important. It's not a bug it's a feature.
Speaker 3: Weird is where the discovery is. If the experiment had
Speaker 3: done exactly what they expected, if the atoms had just
Speaker 3: mixed and thermalized like a cup of coffee, it would
Speaker 3: have been a boring day at the lab. Right yep,
Speaker 3: Entropy still works. The second law of thermodynamics is safe.
Speaker 3: Let's go get lunch.
Speaker 2: Physics still works as advertised. Everyone can go home now exactly.
Speaker 3: But because it didn't mix, because the tulip stayed in
Speaker 3: the foam, they have a new tool, a new principle
Speaker 3: to work with.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to think about the scale of it all too.
Speaker 2: The article talks about this, spanning from nuclei all the
Speaker 2: way to astrophysical environments.
Speaker 3: It shows the universality of physics, which is just a
Speaker 3: beautiful concept. The same fundamental rules that govern a tiny
Speaker 3: chain of rubedium atoms and a vacuum chamber also govern
Speaker 3: the massive forces inside stars, and by studying one we
Speaker 3: learn about the other.
Speaker 2: So let's recap for everyone who might still be picturing
Speaker 2: that coffee cup. What is the headline news here? What's
Speaker 2: the big takeaway?
Speaker 3: The headline is researchers at Duke University used a neutral
Speaker 3: atom quantum simulator to observe a phenomenon called statistical localization.
Speaker 3: This is a state where atoms, despite being able to interact,
Speaker 3: refuse to mix or reach thermal equilibrium. They stay frozen
Speaker 3: in their initial patterns.
Speaker 2: And this is important for two main reasons.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Two main reasons. One it suggests a way to build
Speaker 3: robust quantum memory that doesn't degrade over time, which is
Speaker 3: a huge step for quantum computing. And two, it provides
Speaker 3: a powerful new way to simulate and study the fundamental
Speaker 3: forces of nature, specifically lattice gauge theories, which are too
Speaker 3: hard for normal computers to handle.
Speaker 2: It's a win win, a practical win, and a theoretical win.
Speaker 3: It's a massive win, and it validates a theory from
Speaker 3: just a few years ago, proving that these fragmented states
Speaker 3: are real things you can build and observe.
Speaker 2: It really challenges our perception of time and chaos, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: I mean, we are so used to the idea that
Speaker 2: things fall apart, that order degrades into disorder.
Speaker 3: That's the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy always increases. Things
Speaker 3: fall apart. The center cannot hold. It's one of the
Speaker 3: most fundamental laws we have.
Speaker 2: But here, in this little pocket of the quantum universe,
Speaker 2: entropy is. It's held at bay, It's paused.
Speaker 3: The system finds a way to preserve its structure, to
Speaker 3: preserve its information against all odds.
Speaker 2: It's like finding a sand castle that the tide can't
Speaker 2: wash away.
Speaker 3: That is a beautiful way to put it, a perfect analogy.
Speaker 2: Before we wrap up, I just want to touch on
Speaker 2: the technology one more time, the lasers and lenses. The
Speaker 2: article has a picture. Obviously you can't see it if
Speaker 2: you're listening, but it mentions a close up look at
Speaker 2: tabletop quantum simulator setups and that phrase high degree of
Speaker 2: quantum engineering.
Speaker 3: We really shouldn't closs over that. This isn't just theory
Speaker 3: on a talkboard. The ability to control individual atoms, to
Speaker 3: grab them with light, place them precisely where you want them,
Speaker 3: and then poke them with another laser to excite them
Speaker 3: with this level of precision is a monumental triumph of engineering.
Speaker 2: It really is. We are manipulating the literal building blocks
Speaker 2: of matter like they are legos. We were playing God
Speaker 2: with atoms in a very real, tangible.
Speaker 3: Way, and we're doing it to test theories that describe
Speaker 3: the birth of the universe. There's something almost poetic about that.
Speaker 2: So what's next for this team? The article mentions the
Speaker 2: evolution from small simulators to larger computers. Is that the
Speaker 2: next logical step?
Speaker 3: That's the path. They've proven the principle with this one
Speaker 3: dimension chain of atoms. Now can they scale it? Can
Speaker 3: they build a two dimensional grid? Can they use this
Speaker 3: freezing technique to build a reliable memory bank for a
Speaker 3: one thousand kubit computer?
Speaker 2: And if they can, what is that unlocked?
Speaker 3: If they can, we are one giant step closer to practical,
Speaker 3: fault tolerant quantum computing, which means better drug discovery, new
Speaker 3: material science, more accurate climate modeling, all the things we've been.
Speaker 2: Promised, all starting from a frozen latte.
Speaker 3: All starting from a frozen latte.
Speaker 2: I want to leave everyone with something to think about.
Speaker 2: We spend our entire lives operating under the assumption that
Speaker 2: time moves forward and things mix. You spill the milk,
Speaker 2: it spreads, you break the glass, it shatters into a
Speaker 2: million pieces. But this research shows that at the very
Speaker 2: very bottom of reality, there are exceptions. There are pockets
Speaker 2: of existence that refuse to mix.
Speaker 3: It makes you wonder what else is down there?
Speaker 2: It really does. If nature has a built in mechanism
Speaker 2: to preserve information perfectly, to keep that tulip crisp against
Speaker 2: the relat let's flow of chaos. What else might be
Speaker 2: frozen in the quantum fabric that we haven't found yet?
Speaker 2: Is there information stored in the universe using this exact
Speaker 2: mechanism that has been there since the beginning of time,
Speaker 2: just waiting for us to learn how to read it.
Speaker 3: That is a profound question, a really profound question.
Speaker 2: Something to mull over with your next cup of coffee. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just you know, don't stare at the bone for too long.
Speaker 2: People might think you're up to something. Indeed, thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us on this exploration of the quantum weirdness coming
Speaker 2: out of Duke. It's been a blast.
Speaker 3: It's always a pleasure to freeze time with you.
Speaker 2: See you next time.