It may sound unwieldy, but the Technion’s first-ever experimental demonstration of a 2D interaction of the ‘Cherenkov Radiation’ is an important milestone in the development of the quantum computer. The next Nobel Prize goes to the Technion reaseracher? Likely.
And this quantum supremacy is not an academic matter, but will provide a foundation for Israel’s defense and livelihood. A quantum computer allows arithmetic operations to be performed 10,000 times faster than with previous supercomputers. Quantum supremacy can be compared to the invention of fire, the steam engine, writing and the semiconductor.
“Researchers from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have presented the first experimental observation of Cherenkov radiation confined in two dimensions. The results surprised the researchers when a new record in electron-radiation coupling strength was achieved, and the quantum properties of the radiation were revealed.
Cherenkov radiation is a unique physical phenomenon, which for many years has been used in medical imaging, and in particle detection applications, as well as in laser-driven electron accelerators. The breakthrough achieved by the Technion researchers links this phenomenon to future photonic quantum computing applications and free-electron quantum light sources.
The study, which was published in Physical Review X, was headed by PhD students Yuval Adiv and Shai Tsesses from the Technion, together with Hao Hu from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (…)”, unfolds the press release of the Technion.
And explains further: “The interaction of free electrons with light underlies a plethora of known radiation phenomena and has led to numerous applications in science and industry. One of the most important of these interaction effects is the Cherenkov radiation – electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, such as an electron, travels through a medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that specific medium.
It is the optical equivalent of a supersonic boom, which occurs, for example, when a jet travels faster than the speed of sound. Consequently, Cherenkov radiation is sometimes called an “optical shock wave”. The phenomenon was discovered in 1934. In 1958, the scientists who discovered it were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Since then, during more than 80 years of research, the investigation of Cherenkov radiation led to the development of a wealth of applications, most of them for particle identification detectors and medical imaging.
However, despite the intense preoccupation with the phenomenon, the bulk of theoretical research and all experimental demonstrations concerned Cherenkov radiation in the three-dimensional space and based its description on classical electromagnetism.
Illustration of the experiment carried out at the Technion: a single free electron propagates above the special layered structure that the researchers engineered, only a few tens of nanometers above it.
Now, the Technion researchers present the first experimental observation of 2D Cherenkov radiation, demonstrating that in the two-dimensional space, radiation behaves in a completely different manner – for the first time, the quantum description of light is essential to explain the experiment results.”
And Prof Kaminer points our: “The experiment is part of a paradigm shift in the way we understand this radiation, and more broadly, the relationship between electrons and the radiation they emit. For example, we now understand that free electrons can become entangled with the photons they emit. It is both surprising and exciting to see signs of this phenomenon in the experiment.”