Ground state cooling of massive mechanical objects remains a difficult task restricted by the unresolved mechanical sidebands. Now researchers have proposed an optomechanically-induced-transparency cooling scheme to achieve ...

Matter is composed of atoms, and its physical properties are determined by the complex interactions between atoms and electrons. Theoreticians use quantum mechanics to calculate the forces between atoms, and the behaviour ...

An experiment devised in Griffith University's Centre for Quantum Dynamics has for the first time demonstrated Albert Einstein's original conception of "spooky action at a distance" using a single particle.

If we are ever to fully harness the power of light for use in optical devices, it is necessary to understand photons - the fundamental unit of light. Achieving such understanding, however, is easier said than done. That's ...

Does taking a drug and then getting better mean that the drug made you better? Did that tax cut really stimulate the economy or did it recover on its own? The problem of answering such questions - of inferring causal relationships ...

Research has demonstrated laser control of quantum states in an ordinary silicon wafer and observation of these states via a conventional electrical measurement. The findings—published in the journal Nature Communications ...

The extraordinary promise of quantum information processing—solving problems that classical computers can't, perfectly secure communication—depends on a phenomenon called "entanglement," in which the physical states of ...

(Phys.org)—Light behaves both as a particle and as a wave. Since the days of Einstein, scientists have been trying to directly observe both of these aspects of light at the same time. Now, scientists at EPFL have succeeded ...

Physicists at Yale University have observed a new form of quantum friction that could serve as a basis for robust information storage in quantum computers in the future. The researchers are building upon decades of research, ...

Quantum mechanics is often described as "weird" and "strange" because it abandons many of the intuitive traits of classical physics. For example, the ideas that the world is objective, is deterministic, and exists independent ...

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a set of principles underlying the most fundamental known description of all physical systems at the submicroscopic scale (at the atomic level). Notable among these principles are simultaneous wave-like and particle-like behavior of matter and radiation ("Wave–particle duality"), and the prediction of probabilities in situations where classical physics predicts certainties. Classical physics can be derived as a good approximation to quantum physics, typically in circumstances with large numbers of particles. Thus quantum phenomena are particularly relevant in systems whose dimensions are close to the atomic scale, such as molecules, atoms, electrons, protons and other subatomic particles. Exceptions exist for certain systems which exhibit quantum mechanical effects on macroscopic scale; superfluidity is one well-known example. Quantum theory provides accurate descriptions for many previously unexplained phenomena such as black body radiation and stable electron orbits. It has also given insight into the workings of many different biological systems, including smell receptors and protein structures.