Imagine a quantum system with a set of atoms. The spin of each atom is similar to the alignment of a magnet in that it points along an axis. Superposition is a phenomenon in which an atom's spin can be in a state of different directions at the same time. It is not possible to describe the spin of a single atom without taking into account the spin of other atoms. The atoms are said to be in a state of quantumentanglement. Thermal interactions can easily disruptanglement, but it is remarkable. The harder it is to entangle a system the hotter it is.
Imagine a bunch of atoms being cooled down. The system gets cooler as it becomes more stable. A concise description of the complex final state of the entire system is provided by the lowest possible energy. It would be possible if it could be computed.
Researchers discovered in the late 1990s that ground energy could never be computed in a reasonable period of time.
Physicists thought that an energy level close to the ground should be easier to calculate, as the system would be warmer and simpler.
The computer scientists disagreed. The final energy is just as hard to calculate as the final energy itself. The quantum version would say that the ground energy is just as hard to calculate as the precursor energy. Many researchers think the quantum version should be the same as the classical one. Yuen believed that a quantum version must be true.
It would have profound physical consequences. Physicists had expected quantum systems to retain theirentanglement at lower temperatures. No one could prove that such systems existed.
The problem was narrowed down by two people working at Microsoft Research Station Q in Santa Barbara. They decided to look for systems that are hard to calculate because of the amount of circuitry it would take for a computer to simulation them. If these quantum systems were to find them, they would have to retain their rich patterns ofentanglement. The existence of such systems would count as progress if they existed.
In the area of study called quantum error correction, researchers create recipes of entanglement that are designed to protect atoms from interference. There are many codes of both greater and lesser stature.
The breakthrough in creating quantum error-correcting codes came at the end of the year. Several groups of researchers built on the results over the next few months.
The three authors of the new paper, who had been collaborating on related projects over the past two years, came together to prove that one of the new codes had all the properties needed. They proved the NLTS hypothesis.
Physicists thought that entanglement was vulnerable to temperature. It shows that even away from the ground energy, a quantum system's energy can't be calculated.
The thing that seemed unlikely to be true was told to us by it. In some strange system.
Different technical tools will need to be used to prove the full quantum PCP. They think the current result will bring them closer.
They are most curious about the nature of the NLTS quantum systems and what they would look like. Complex patterns of long-range entanglement that have never been produced in the laboratory would be required according to the current result.
Chinmay Nirkhe is a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley and a co-author of the new paper.
Anshu believes that if you have the ability to couple qubits, you could understand the system. There is another journey to take to get to the low energy spectrum. It is possible that there is a part of the universe called NLTS. I'm not sure.
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