1338
The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) made the first observation of the highest entanglement energy in top and antitop quarks at 13 TeV. Entanglement, an amazing prediction of physics, connects distant objects as if they were connected.
Traditionally observed in photons and low energies, this phenomenon has now been discovered in pairs of top quarks, the heaviest known particles.
The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva made this revolutionary discovery, expanding the scope of entanglement compared to previous examples. The researchers say they have measured spin entanglement with high precision using data from high-energy proton collisions. This is the first observation of such entanglement in quarks and at the highest energy level.
In everyday life, we think of objects as separate or interconnected. However, entangled objects are neither truly separate nor physically related; measuring one object instantly reveals information about another, even if they are far apart.
The researchers demonstrated this phenomenon using the example of photons, and it is a key concept in quantum physics. According to the team, while popular science fiction such as the "Three-Body Problem" suggests using entanglement for faster-than-light communication, according to quantum theory, this is impossible.
Entanglement, first demonstrated with photons in the 1980s, is now used in technologies such as quantum computing. Recent advances from Geneva extended it to high-energy top quarks, the first observation of entanglement at such extreme energy levels.
Matter is made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, with electrons revolving around a dense nucleus, a concept coined in 1911. The nucleus contains protons and neutrons, and by the 1970s these were discovered to be made up of quarks – six types in total. Among them, the "top" quark is the heaviest, weighing about 184 times more than a proton, and even heavier than a tungsten atom. Its enormous size remains unexplained and is the subject of intense study at the Large Hadron Collider.
Researchers, including those working on the ATLAS experiment in Sydney, are investigating whether such a large mass could be caused by unknown forces or reveal new laws of physics, as the current laws of physics seem incomplete. The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, which studies top and antitop quarks produced in proton collisions at 13 TeV, has made it possible to observe entanglement at the highest energies to date.
The researchers were able to identify spin entanglement by measuring a specific angle between charged leptons from quark pairs. By concentrating on stable particles to minimize errors in the simulation models, this measurement, which was made near the birth barrier of the top-antitope quark, helps ensure accuracy.
With a high degree of reliability, the result showed a significant value of the confusion marker D = -0,537. This is the first time quark entanglement has been observed at such high energies.
The group argues that entanglement is not specific to top quarks, but rather a widespread phenomenon in quantum physics. Although entanglement can occur in a variety of systems, it is a sensitive process that is often studied at extremely low temperatures to avoid perturbations.
Because the top quark has significant mass, it can be used to study entanglement more effectively than the other five quark types. However, due to the scale of the Large Hadron Collider, top quark pairs are not useful for everyday technology.
Even so, scientists say that top quarks are a useful experimental tool, and that the study of entanglement is still fascinating, encouraging more research to draw new conclusions.
