Physicists from the University of Gdańsk are developing new theoretical mechanisms which will help to better characterise systems made up of many particles. This in turn will result in an improvement of physical measurements and in future may help in constructing quantum computers.   

Let us imagine that we are playing with a cat and throwing a ball which bounces off a wall. At this particular moment the ball and the wall constitute a system which, should we wish to do so, may be described by means of physical tools. All we need is the information regarding the parts which make up this system such as the speed of the ball, the elasticity of the wall etc. On the other hand, equipped with data concerning the ball and the wall, we are able to reconstruct their behaviour.

Isn’t this obvious and intuitive? Of course it is. But everything changes the moment we enter the level of microworld, the world of particles and atoms and the area of interest of quantum physics.

"If we have an analogous system here and we are in possession of complete information about either of the particles, then we still cannot say that at the same time we have full information about the entire system”, Dr hab. Wiesław Laskowski from the University of Gdańsk’s Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics told PAP.  "Quantum correlations between particles are something more than the correlations known from classical physics, the physics which describes behaviours which we know from everyday experience in the macroworld. For this reason, the classical theory cannot describe these phenomena", he added.

The entire interview with Prof. Wiesław Laskowski from the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics of the University of Gdańsk (in Polish) is available at  PAP – Nauka w Polsce „Fizycy z UG zwiększają dokładność pomiarów”.