Quantum Physics In Minutes
Despite the difficulty of quantum physics, this book is able to cover a lot of basic theories with clarity. This is a good introductory guidebook for anyone interested in understanding a bit more about what quantum physics actually entails.
Quantum Physics in Minutes
The fastest way to understanding quantum physics - learn about how our universe works, in minutes. Quantum physics is the most fundamental, but also the most bewildering, of sciences. Allowing for simultaneously dead-and-alive cats, teleportation, antimatter and parallel universes, it also underpins all digital technology and even life itself. But at last it's possible through this clear and compact book, illuminated with 200 simple diagrams for anyone to understand the strange and beautiful subatomic world, and hence the nature of reality itself.
Contents include: inside the atom, the Higgs boson, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Schrodinger's cat, relativity, dark energy and matter, black holes, God playing dice, the Theory of Everything, the birth and fate of the Universe, string theory, quantum computing, superconductivity, quantum biology and consciousness, and much more.
In this easy-to-read audiobook, we will cover the basics of quantum physics so that you will be able to satiate your curiosity. Reading this audiobook will provide you with insight into this revolutionary yet esoteric school of physics, that is soon going to take center stage.
Quantum computers, quantum cryptography, and quantum (insert name here) are often in the news these days. Articles about them inevitably refer to entanglement, a property of quantum physics that makes all these magical devices possible.
Conservation laws are some of the deepest and most pervasive concepts in all of physics. The law of conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains fixed (although it can be converted from electrical energy to mechanical energy to heat, and so on). This law underlies the workings of all of our machines, whether they are steam engines or electric cars. Conservation laws are a kind of accounting statement: you can exchange bits of energy around, but the total amount has to stay the same.
Picture yourself on a nice hike through the woods. You come to a fork in the trail, but you find yourself struggling to decide whether to go left or right. The path to the left looks dark and gloomy but is reputed to lead to some nice views, while the one to the right looks sunny but steep. You finally decide to go right, wistfully wondering about the road not taken. In a quantum world, you could have chosen both.
For systems described by quantum mechanics (that is, things that are sufficiently well isolated from heat and external disturbances), the rules are more interesting. Like a spinning top, an electron for example can be in a state where it spins clockwise, or in another state where it spins anticlockwise. Unlike a spinning top though, it can also be in a state that is [clockwise spinning] + [anticlockwise spinning].
The states of quantum systems can be added together and subtracted from each other. Mathematically, the rules for combining quantum states can be described in the same way as the rules for adding and subtracting vectors. The word for such a combination of quantum states is a superposition. This is really what is behind strange quantum effects that you may have heard about, such as the double-slit experiment, or particle-wave duality.
But the quantum states of a pair of atoms can be more interesting. The energy of the pair can be partitioned in many possible ways (consistent with energy conservation, of course). The combined state of the pair of atoms can be in a superposition, for example:
As theoretical physicists, we're not satisfied to have two different theories. We need one, unified theory which encompasses both, and that's a very hard problem that theoretical physicists have been working on for the better part of the last hundred years. It turns out that this idea of the holographic principle or the universe is a hologram, although at first, it might seem like a completely random idea, it actually helps us to solve some of the thorniest puzzles that arise when you try to combine quantum mechanics and general relativity. That's why we're excited about and that's why we continue to study it. HOST: And there you have it, the holographic principle explained in under five minutes. We're going to be doing a lot more of these podcasts in the coming months so I hope you join us for, "The Take: Big Ideas Explained in Under 5 Minutes." Brought to you by Brandeis University.
However, despite the vast improvements in battery technology, today consumers of electric vehicles face another difficulty -- slow battery charging speed. Currently, cars take about 10 hours to fully recharge at home. Even the fastest superchargers at the charging stations require up to 20-40 minutes to fully recharge the vehicles. This creates additional costs and inconvenience to the customers.
To address this problem, scientists looked for answers in the mysterious field of quantum physics. Their search has led to the discovery that quantum technologies may promise new mechanisms to charge batteries at a faster rate. Such concept of "quantum battery" has been first proposed in a seminal paper published by Alicki and Fannes in 2012. It was theorized that quantum resources, such as entanglement, can be used to vastly speed up the battery charging process by charging all cells within the battery simultaneously in a collective manner.
This is particularly exciting as modern large-capacity batteries can contain numerous cells. Such collective charging is not possible in classical batteries, where the cells are charged in parallel independently of one another. The advantage of this collective versus parallel charging can be measured by the ratio called the 'quantum charging advantage'. Later, around the year 2017, it was noticed that there can be two possible sources behind this quantum advantage -- namely 'global operation' (in which all the cells talk to all others simultaneously, i.e., "all sitting at one table") and 'all-to-all coupling' (every cell can talk with every other, but a single cell, i.e., "many discussions, but every discussion has only two participants"). However, it is unclear whether both these sources are necessary and whether there are any limits to the charging speed that can be achieved.
Recently, scientists from the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) further explored these questions. The paper, which was chosen as an "Editor's Suggestion" in the journal Physical Review Letters, showed that all-to-all coupling is irrelevant in quantum batteries and that the presence of global operations is the only ingredient in the quantum advantage. The group went further to pinpoint the exact source of this advantage while ruling out any other possibilities and even provided an explicit way of designing such batteries.
In addition, the group was able to precisely quantify how much charging speed can be achieved in this scheme. While the maximum charging speed increases linearly with the number of cells in classical batteries, the study showed that quantum batteries employing global operation can achieve quadratic scaling in charging speed. To illustrate this, we will consider a typical electric vehicle with a battery that contains about 200 cells. Employing this quantum charging would lead to a 200 times speedup over classical batteries, which means that at home charging time would be cut from 10 hours to about 3 minutes. At high-speed charging stations, the charge time would be cut from 30 minutes to mere seconds.
Researchers say that consequences can be far-reaching and that the implications of quantum charging can go well beyond electric cars and consumer electronics. For example, it may find key uses in future fusion power plants, which require large amounts of energy to be charged and discharged in an instant. Of course, quantum technologies are still in their infancy and there is a long way to go before these methods can be implemented in practice. Research findings such as these, however, create a promising direction and can incentivize the funding agencies and businesses to further invest in these technologies. If employed, it is believed that quantum batteries would completely revolutionize the way we use energy and take us a step closer to our sustainable future.
Despite significant and ongoing improvements in battery technology, consumers of electric vehicles still face slow battery charging speed. Currently, cars can take about 10 hours to recharge fully at home. Even the DC fast chargers require up to 20-40 minutes to fully recharge the vehicles. This creates additional costs and inconvenience to the customers.
Recently, scientists from the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) further explored these questions. The paper showed that all-to-all coupling is irrelevant in quantum batteries and that the presence of global operations is the only ingredient in the quantum advantage. The group went further to pinpoint the exact source of this advantage while ruling out any other possibilities and even provided an explicit way of designing such batteries.
In addition, the group was able to quantify how much charging speed can be achieved in this scheme. While the maximum charging speed increases linearly with the number of cells in classical batteries, the study showed that quantum batteries employing global operation can achieve quadratic scaling in charging speed. To illustrate this, consider a typical electric vehicle with a battery that contains about 200 cells. Employing this quantum charging would lead to a 200 times speedup over classical batteries, which means that at home charging time would be cut from 10 hours to about 3 minutes. At high-speed charging stations, the charge time would be cut from 30 minutes to mere seconds. 041b061a72