Fakultät für Mathematik und Physik News & Veranstaltungen
Latest Research at the Institute for Theoretical Physics

Latest Research at the Institute for Theoretical Physics

Energy cost of entanglement extraction in complex quantum systems, Nature Communications, 9 3792 (2018)

Researchers at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Leibniz University Hannover, together with collaborators in Hanyang University and the University of Sydney, have proposed a theoretical method for quantifying the energy cost of extracting entanglement from complex physical systems.

Entanglement is one of the most fascinating aspects of quantum physics.  Put simply, entanglement consists of correlations between particles that cannot exist in classical physics.  This has rather dramatic consequences in the emerging field of quantum information, including superdense coding, quantum teleportation and quantum key distribution.  Entanglement is also crucial for a quantum computer to function.

One idea to distribute entanglement among different locations is to simply extract it from a physical system: the electromagnetic field.  This is possible in theory, and in fact the electromagnetic field has an infinite amount of entanglement.  But a major roadblock is the energy cost.  How much energy would this take?

Researchers at Leibniz University Hannover, together with their collaborators, have studied this question in detail, introducing a method allowing one to get lower bounds on the energy cost of extracting entanglement.  Combining a toy model, physical insight and numerics, they studied this problem, finding the optimal energy cost necessary to extract entanglement in specific quantum fields and condensed matter systems.  This is pioneering work and opens up a whole avenue of related questions and ideas, which will be explored in further research.

For more details, see the original publication at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06153-w
C. Bény, C. T. Chubb, T. Farrelly, T. J. Osborne, Energy cost of entanglement extraction in complex quantum systems, Nature Communications, 9 3792 (2018)

 

Author of this press release is Dr. Farrelly. If you have any further questions regarding this press release, please contact him per mail.