Scientists develop technique to visualize quantum “Yin-Yang”

Scientists from the University of Ottawa, in Canada, and the Sapienza University of Rome, in Italy, have developed an innovative technique that allows the visualization of the wave function of two entangled photons. O study, peer-reviewed, was published in Nature Photonics.

The technique is based on advanced camera technology and demonstrates a fast and efficient way to reconstruct the complete quantum state of entangled particles – which resemble the shape of the Yin-Yang symbol, from Chinese philosophy.

To explain the concept of entanglement, we use the analogy of a pair of shoes. The moment you identify a shoe, you automatically know the nature of the other, whether it corresponds to the left or right foot, regardless of its location in the Universe.

In the case of a wave function, this principle allows quantum scientists to predict likely results of various measurements of a quantum entity, e.g. position, velocity, etc.

So far, however, the techniques tried to know the wave function of a system of entangled particles (which have strong non-local correlations) required more time and sensitivity of the settings.

“This method is exponentially faster than previous techniques, requiring only minutes or seconds instead of days. Importantly, detection time is not influenced by system complexity — a solution to the long-standing scalability challenge in projective tomography,” explained one of the paper’s co-authors, Alessio D’Errico, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa. .