"Quantum Mousetrap" to Look for Gravity Waves

Fabrizio Tamburini of the University of Padua in Italy believes that we could have the technology for a “quantum mousetrap”, a new gravitational wave detector, within the next decade.

Tamburini believes that the phenomenon of “quantum entanglement” could help scientists detect gravitational waves.  Quantum entanglement occurs when two particles enter a quantum state where they “know” information about each other.  Their quantum states are related instantaneously, no matter how far apart the two particles are. Scientists have used photons to demonstrate this effect.

According to Tamburini and his team, gravitational waves could be detected by examining their effect on pairs of entangled photons.  A machine could create a continuous stream of billions of entangled photons while checking how many had gone “missing” after about one metre. This would reveal any gravitational waves that were at least a metre long.

Currently, we do not have an efficient enough source of entangled photons to do this.  We also do not have technology that is advance enough to detect them.  However, Tamburini is confident that it will not be long before the “quantum mousetrap” becomes a reality.

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