Twins find ‘magic’ in quarks at Large Hadron Collider

Futurist Arthur C. Clarke He famously said That “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Well, a team of physicists has just shown that the Large Hadron Collider’s common particle production method produces just that.

The Large Hadron Collider has reliably produced some of the most compelling discoveries in particle physics for more than a decade. Her most famous contributions to science are Observing the Higgs Boson In 2012, but the giant particle accelerator is an integral part of the particle physics infrastructure, where… New insights in Tiny parts of matter and The basic laws that govern our world They are questioned thoroughly.

The team consists of the White brothers, twin physicists at Queen Mary, University of London, and the University of Adelaide in Australia, respectively.published This week’s paper in Physical review d Investigating the emergence of a property, literally known as magic, in collisions at the LHC.

“Our work explores the concept of ‘magic’ in top quarks, which essentially measures the suitability of particles for building powerful quantum computers,” said Chris White, from Queen Mary University of London. He releases. Top quarks are one of six types – or flavors – of quarks Heavier particles In standard form.

The magic is a measure of how difficult it is to simulate the quantum state of a classical computer. The idea is that for particularly complex problems, classical computers are of little use. In reference to Clarke, the established science is essentially magic for classical computers – although I should point out that using the term “magic” in hard physics is unacceptable. Tracked To J.E. Klauder in 1972.

In their study, the brothers studied the behavior of top quarks and the probability of the LHC producing magic top quarks, as determined by the speed and direction of the particles. The detectors of the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid experiments at the LHC can measure these properties.

“The time seems particularly ripe to explore whether magic is a natural determinism in current collider experiments,” the twins wrote in the paper. “Put more simply: Does nature produce magic top quarks, and if not, why not?”

Electric Light Orchestra has a song called “Strange Magic,” which, at the risk of defaming Jeff Lynne’s lofty lyrics, feels (at my most cynical) to be redundant. Magic is inherently foreign to us, which is why we call it magic. But perhaps the strangest magic is that which describes the limits of the world we understand, phenomena that experts are still working to solve.

“The higher the magic, the more we need quantum computers to describe behavior,” Martin White, a physicist at the University of Adelaide and co-author of the study, said in a university statement. “Studying the magical properties of quantum systems is generating important insights into the development and potential uses of quantum computers.”

Quantum computers It operates on quantum bits (or qubits), which are similar to regular computer bits except that their values ​​can be interpreted as 0 and 1 simultaneously, a quirk of the quantum world that enables computers to think of more solutions to a problem faster than a classical computer. the The ultimate goalThe expectation, indeed, is that quantum computers will be able to solve problems that classical computers cannot, a feat that quantum scientists are racing toward, sometimes using… Unconventional approaches.

Martin White said: “This discovery is not just about the heaviest particles in the universe, it is about unleashing the potential of a revolutionary new computational model.”

Over the summer, Quantum Computing Corp Announce the quantity A computer that it said outperformed Google’s historic computer result that showed “quantum superiority” 100 times.

Earlier this month, Google made its debut Its latest quantum chip, Willow, which the company said can perform calculations in five million times that would take one of the world’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years. Google’s quantum research team also demonstrated a remarkable aspect of their quantum system: a massive reduction in the computer’s error rate as the size of the quantum computer grows. Suffice it to say that this race toward a brave new world in quantum information is on the rise.

LHC came Back online In 2022, after a three-year hiatus for routine maintenance and upgrades to the system. Last year, scientists working on CERN’s CMS experiment – the heaviest experiment in the LHC – were deployed New progress In search of dark (or hidden) photons, a candidate for dark matter.

All this comes in advance of the next High Luster-LHCwhich will increase the facility’s brilliance tenfold and increase the number of Higgs bosons that physicists can study by an order of magnitude. The refurbished Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to be operational by 2029; Currently, the third phase of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is underway until 2026.