by Jorge Cham.

Ok, this is where things get weird. If quantum computers, femtometer motions or laser alligators weren’t enough, let’s throw in fractionalized electrons, topological surfaces and strings that go to the end of time.

To be honest, the idea that an electron can’t be split hadn’t even occurred to me before my conversation with Gil and Jason. And yet, this goes back to the very essence of the word Quantum: there’s a minimum size to everything. For electrical charge, that minimum is the electron.

Or so we thought! According to my friend, Wikipedia, the discovery of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect in the 1980’s showed that you can form quasi-particles (or “bubbles” as Gil and Jason explain in the video) that carry 1/3 of an electron charge under certain 2D conditions. The 1998 Nobel Prize was awarded for this discovery, although, ironically, they had to split it in three (two for the experimentalists who found it and one for the theorist that explained it).

Typically, I leave a lot out of the final video. The conversation I recorded with Jason and Gil lasted several hours and yet the final product is only five minutes long. One aspect that we talked a lot about but that I did not include in the video above (you watched it already, right?), is the idea of “More is Different”. Here is audio of Jason explaining what it is using birds as an example:

source: we-are-star-stuff.tumblr.com. Click below to hear the audio.

This is the idea of “emergent properties”: that when you combine lots of something together, you don’t just get what’s inside, you get something new. Something different. I think this is a good analogy for IQIM itself, or any such grouping of researchers under one banner. Sure, technically, each person can do great research on their own, but mix them together in one soup and more interesting things can happen that you didn’t expect.

The IQIM Family:

Well, I hope you’ve been enjoying these videos and blog entries. I was going to title this blog post, “The Mysteries Are Just Piling Up” or “Quantum Knots”, but then I looked at the pageviews for all the other blog posts I made:

I guess the title of your blog post matters. So, if this video didn’t shock you, I hope at least it 1/3 shocked you.

Watch the fourth installment of this series:

Jorge Cham is the creator of Piled Higher and Deeper (www.phdcomics.com).

CREDITS:

Featuring: Gil Refael and Jason Alicea
Recorded and animated by Jorge Cham

Funding provided by the National Science Foundation and the Betty and Gordon Moore Foundation.

by Jorge Cham

How do you make something that has never existed before?

I often get suggestions for comics I should draw, which I welcome because A) I like to think of PHD Comics as a global collaborative effort and B) after 17 years, I’m almost out of ideas. This particular suggestion came from Chen-Lung Hung, a postdoc in Physics at Caltech:

PANEL 1 – Ask a scientist: “What motivates you to do the research you do?”

PANEL 2 – What people expect them to answer: “This can lead to real-life applications such as A, B, C, D, etc.”

PANEL 3 – How a real scientist would answer: “Because it’s cool.”

Ok, granted, the punchline needs work. Chen-Lung also asked me to make it clear that his research has important real-life applications, should someone from NSF, who funds his work, happen to be reading this blog.

Chen-Lung’s work with Prof. Jeff Kimble of Caltech’s IQIM is the subject of the third installment in our animated series of explanations of Quantum concepts and devices.

“The problem with atoms,” Prof. Kimble said at one point during our 3-4 hour conversation, “is that they exist in three dimensional space.” I didn’t know that was a problem (unless you expect them to exist in more than 3 dimensions), but Jeff explained that it means it’s very hard to control Quantum systems because the world is wide open, and information can leak and be corrupted from any direction. After a entire academic career making breakthroughs with one type of Quantum System, he’s now directing his group towards a new, experimental type which they believe has more potential for building devices with many Quantum Objects. As Jeff says in the video, “It’s a privilege to be able to explore.”

Shaping light, trapping atoms, alligator waveguides… The goal, Jeff and Chen-lung explained, is to make systems that are “surprising.” Not surprisingly, it was really hard to draw this video. How do you depict something that has never existed before? And more importantly, do you draw alligators differently from crocodiles? (Did you know alligators only exist in two places in the world: the Southern part of the United States, and in China?).

Hopefully, those of you watching will get some understanding of some key Quantum concepts and what it takes to build and manipulate Quantum systems, but to be honest, I make these videos because I think the work is really cool.

Jeff and Chen-Lung: thanks for taking us along on this adventure of yours, the privilege is all ours.

Watch the third installment of this series:

Jorge Cham is the creator of Piled Higher and Deeper (www.phdcomics.com).

CREDITS:

Featuring: Jeff Kimble and Chen-Lung Hung
Animated by Jorge Cham

Produced in Partnership with the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (http://iqim.caltech.edu) at Caltech with funding provided by the National Science Foundation and the Betty and Gordon Moore Foundation.