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Jan 19, 2024

Protons reveal universal phenomenon of maximal entanglement

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Eighteen months ago, it was shown that different parts of the interior of the proton must be maximally quantum entangled with each other. This result, achieved with the participation of Prof. Krzysztof Kutak from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow and Prof. Martin Hentschinski from the Universidad de las Americas Puebla in Mexico, was a consequence of considerations and observations of collisions of high-energy photons with quarks and gluons in protons and supported the hypothesis presented a few years earlier by professors Dimitri Kharzeev and Eugene Levin.

Now, in a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, an international team of physicists has been presented a complementary analysis of entanglement for collisions between photons and protons in which secondary particles (hadrons) are produced by a process called diffractive deep inelastic scattering. The main question was: does entanglement also occur among quarks and gluons in these cases, and if so, is it also maximal?

Putting it in simple terms, physicists speak of entanglement between various quantum objects when the values of some feature of these objects are related. Quantum entanglement is not observed in the classical world, but its essence is easily explained by the toss of two coins. Each coin has two sides, and when it falls, it can take one of two mutually exclusive values (heads or tails) with the same probability.

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