Quantum Entanglement
- Anna Oliva
- Jan 5, 2024
- 1 min read
Entanglement apparatus via https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.06309
In the past few years, studies on quantum entanglement, which I explained back in a post in 2022, have sparked an interest in applications of the phenomenon. Now, further developments render entanglement increasingly viable for use in practical technology. This past December, two separate teams of researchers uncovered a novel method to reliably entangle CaF molecules. Molecules, groups of two or more elements bonded through shared electrons, are ripe for study as they possess complex internal structures and relatively stable bonded states.
Regarding the method itself, it is important to note the trait of CaF that allows for the entanglement to occur. Electronegativity is a chemical species’s tendency to attract electrons. Calcium and fluorine, which comprise CaF, have very different electronegativities. Calcium has low electronegativity whereas fluorine is the element with the highest electronegativity value. Therefore, when the two interact, fluorine holds the shared electrons of CaF closer to itself. Because electrons are negative and unequally shared in CaF, the molecule is polar and possesses an electric dipole with the pole with calcium being positively charged and the fluorine pole negatively charged. The positive calcium side of a CaF molecule is attracted to the negative fluorine side of other CaF molecules, resulting in dipole-dipole molecular interactions.
The physicists used a “tweezer array,” a system of tightly focused laser beams, to cool individual molecules and arrange them with opposite poles facing one another and interacting to create a Bell state, the highest entanglement state in which two quantum bits can exist.
The paper published on the method:
Further reading:
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