Indian scientists have developed a novel protocol to find out whether a pair of electrons are in an entangled state so that they can be safely used as resources for facilitating quantum information processing tasks.

Trending in news this year is the Quantum Technology, (As it used to be until last year were- the Internet of Things (IoT) CSP 2019, Artificial Intelligence (AI) etc.)

Must read all this news in a loop:

National Mission on QC

Quantum Coin

Quantum Supremacy

What is Quantum Entanglement (QE)?

• QE is the name given to a special connection between pairs or groups of quantum systems, or any objects described by quantum mechanics.
• It is one of the biggest parts of quantum mechanics that makes it hard to understand in terms of the everyday world.
• When we look at particles, we usually say that each particle has its own quantum state. Sometimes, two particles can act on one another and become an entangled system.
• When a pair or group of particles can only be described by the quantum state for the system, and not by individual quantum states, we say the particles are “entangled”.

Going bit technical here-

• It is the physical phenomenon that occurs when a pair or group of particles is generated; interact, in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the pair or group cannot be described independently of the state of the others.
• Entangled states are key resources to facilitate many quantum information processing tasks and quantum cryptographic protocols.

Why decode the Entanglement?

• Entanglement is fragile and is easily lost during the transit of photons through the environment.
• Hence it is extremely important to know whether a pair of photons are entangled, in order to use them as a resource.
• Verification of entanglement requires the use of measurement devices, but such devices may be hacked or compromised.

How to secure QE?

• Device-independent self-testing (DIST) is a method that can be used in order to overcome such a possibility.
• This method enables the verification of entanglement in an unknown quantum state of two photons without having direct access to the state, or complete trust in the measurement devices.
• The theory relies on the application of the quantum uncertainty principle while implementing full device independence is a difficult task.

Back2Basics: Quantum Mechanics

• Quantum mechanics (QM) is a fundamental theory in physics which describes nature at the smallest scales of energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles.
• It is the body of scientific laws that describe the wacky behaviour of photons, electrons and the other particles that make up the universe.

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