Imagine heating your water just by receiving a message. While seemingly impossible, researchers in Canada have achieved a breakthrough in quantum physics: teleporting energy between two atoms without any physical transfer of particles or waves. This groundbreaking discovery, led by Boris Ragula and Eduardo Martín-Martínez, could revolutionize fields like advanced cooling and even spacetime engineering.
The team's work focuses on Quantum Energy Teleportation (QET), a process that uses quantum entanglement to remotely transfer energy. Unlike traditional quantum teleportation, which transfers the state of a particle, QET allows energy to appear in a location without physically traveling there. This is achieved by Alice measuring her atom, sending the results to Bob, who then extracts energy from his entangled atom.
Experiments have validated QET's potential. Researchers successfully tested QET using nuclear magnetic resonance with a molecule of trans-crotonic acid, where carbon atoms acted as qubits. Furthermore, the protocol was tested on IBM's quantum computers, demonstrating its feasibility in virtual qubits. This marks the first instance of extracting energy from a system that should theoretically be passive to local operations.
QET's applications are vast. It could revolutionize algorithmic cooling of quantum systems, essential for maintaining qubit coherence in quantum computing. Even more astonishing is the potential for generating negative energy densities, which could influence spacetime and potentially enable phenomena like wormhole stabilization. While limitations exist, QET represents an optimal protocol for exploring extreme quantum effects.