Scientists may have figured out a way to detect elusive dark matter using quantum computers, an effort that could finally shed some light on the properties of the mysterious component of the universe.
With what little information experts have on dark matter, one thing they know about it is that it is cold, which means that the particles that make it up are slow-moving. There is also difficulty in detecting dark matter directly because it does not interact with light in any way.
Detecting Dark Matter
A senior scientist at Fermilab, Aaron Chou, is working on detecting dark matter through quantum science. The effort is part of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of High Energy Physics QuantISED program. Chou has developed a way to utilize qubits, which are the main component of quantum computing systems, to detect single photons that are produced by dark matter in the presence of a strong magnetic field.
In a classical computer, information processing is done with binary bits set to either 0 or 1, with the specific pattern of ones and zeros making it possible for the computer to perform certain functions and tasks. On the other hand, quantum computing makes use of qubits that exist at both 0 and 1 simultaneously until they are, which is due to a quantum mechanical property known as superposition, as per SciTechDaily.
This feature allows quantum computers to perform complex calculations at a much more efficient pace compared to a classical computer which would take an enormous amount of time to complete.
Chou noted that qubits work by manipulating single excitations of information, such as single photons. This means that if you were working with such small packets of energy as single excitations, you are much more susceptible to external disturbances.
According to New Atlas, detecting dark matter is a work in progress for many experts worldwide, including researchers from the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU), the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Delaware. Various experts have outlined a potential new method for detecting the elusive matter near our Sun.
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Atomic Clocks
Near our solar system's star, the density of the material should be high enough that they predict signals should be much clearer than experiments done here on Earth. The newly proposed method is sending atomic clocks close to the sun.
Since these atomic clocks work by measuring the frequency of photons emitted by atoms that are transitioning between states, they are expected to be capable of detecting when dark matter causes oscillations.
An author of the study, Joshua Eby, said that the more dark matter there is around the experiment, the larger the oscillations will be. This means that the local density of dark matter is crucial in the analysis of the signal.
Despite the researchers now knowing the precise density of the dark matter near the sun, they argued that even a relatively low-sensitivity search could provide crucial information. Dark matter's density is only constrained within our solar system by information about planet orbits, Phys.org reported.
