Law and. We are building machines to undermine nature’s most rigid rule, says physicist Vlatko Vedral FEW yearsago,thadan ideathat may soundalitiecrazyIthought [ould sea way tobuildan engine that works harder thanthe awsof physiesaow. You would bewithin yourrightstobaulk atthis proposition. Afterall the efficiency ofenginesis governed by thermodynamics the ‘most solid pillarof physic. This sone st ofnaturallaws you dont mess with Yeti leavemy ffice tthe University af Oxford and strolldown the corridor. Ieannow seeanengine that pays no heed tothese laws Itisamachineof considerable powerand intricacy, with green lasers and ions instead foil and pistons. There sa longroad ahead, bout believe contraptions ike this one will shapethe future of technology. \ i Better more efficient computers would bejust the stat. The engineis also harbinger ofanew erainscience. To build it, wehave hhadto uncover afield called quantum thermodynamics, onesettoretuneouridese about why life, the universe-everything, in factaretheway they are. Thermodynamics isthetheory that describes | ehe interplay between temperate, heat, ‘energy and work Assuch, it toucheson pretty 4 {much everything. ftom your braintoyour muscles carenginesto kitchen blenders, stars 32 NewScientist 7 April2018 @ieltszone_uz IELTS ZONE +998 97 130 68 22@ieltszone_uz .dsorder to quasars. It provides abase from which we can workout what sortsof things doand don’t happen inthe universe. Ifyou eat a burger, you must bur off the caloriesor get fatter. Coffeeneverspontaneously warms up when setonatable. Asthe universe expands, itcools, heading unvwaveringly towards heat death in the distant future. Allthese unavoidabletruths spring from thermodynamics. In fact, they come from itstwo main laws, uncreatively named thefirst and the second laws. ‘These laws go back long way, and one of my favourite episodes relating tothetr creation involves Julius von Mayer, aGerman doctor whose real passion was physics. The story goes that in the 8405, Mayer got ajobas a ship's surgeon ona voyage toakarta. During, this, he noticed something curious: nearthe ‘tropics, the blood inthe sailors' veins wasn't blue asi would be back home in Germany, but deep red. He hypothesised (wrongly, as it turns ‘out) that the redder blood was dueto less food being used to keep the body warm in the hotterclimate. But in thinking about the giveand take between metabolism, ‘temperature and heat generation inthe body, Mayerhad alighted on theessence ‘of the first law: energy can't be created or destroyed, merely passed around. ‘What cameto be called the second law had its genesis about 20 years before Mayer boarded his ship. Atthis time, steam engines were transforming Europe, their furnacesand pistons driving the factories and mills ofthe industrial evolution. Sadi Carnot, a French engineer, wasdissatieied that no ane had a rigorous understandingof how these engines worked, and set out todevelopone. IELTS’ ZONE COVER STORY His cructal insight was that, left to their ‘own devices, hot things always spread warmth totheir surroundings When wateris heated insteamengines, forexample, some ofthe heat always leaks away to theairoutside,so they are never perfectly efficient. In 1824, he published his only book generalising the idea toshow that noengine can exceed accertain, limit,now known asthe Carnot efficiency. ‘Thisdependson the temperature difference between theheat source (say, afire) and the heatsink say, the outside air), Inescapable entropy Carnot died afew years later and hisbook was ignored fordecades until German physicist Rudolf Clausius ook notice. Carnot had concelvedofhea sa weightloss substance called calorie but Clustusknew twas actually related to how fast atoms or molecules move That enabled him to reformulate Carnot’ ideas in terms of a measure of disorderhe called entropy. Imagine youhave hot box of particlesthat are movingquickiy and acold boxofslow-movingones. That isanorderiy arrangement because alte pariceswith similar energies are together, But the universe doesn't ikelow entropy states, said Clausius. if youopen the boxes, the particles ‘mix. Thisled him to thesecond lawas we know it: entropy naturally increases unless you put in some work to stop it. Follow the logicof the two laws and you end up with acast-iron description of what's possiblein the universe. The astrophysicist Arthur Eddington once said: "If your theory Is found tobe against the second law of. thermodynamics ican giveyounchope; > 7 April2018| New Scientist 133 +998 97 130 68 22thereis nothing fort but tocollapsein deepest humiliation.” ‘What, then, of my ideaforan enginethat bends the rules? It would seem like piein the sky. Actually, we haveaname foran engine that brushes aside thermodynamics. We callita perpetual motion machine, a byword forscientificcharlatanry. But the ‘machine down the corridors not oneof those. It exploitsa sneaky but legitimate loophole: quantum physics. ‘Thermodynamics predates quantum theory; in fact, twas responsible for its birth. 1900, the German physicist Max Planck ing to understand the properties ofa hypothetical object called a black body that absorbsall radiation fallingon itand then emits it again. The best physicsof thetime suggested there were an infinite number cof wavelengths, sothe body would emit aninfiniteamount of energy. That was nonsensical Planck solved the problem by supposingthat energy can only come in chunks. He called them quanta, ‘That leap helped explain many nigeling, questions in physics. But when we began. studying objects that perform according to the quantum playbook, we found they do extraordinary things. One of the best-known ‘examples entanglement, whentwo particles become intertwined so that interfering with cone instantly changes theproperties ofthe other. Another exampleis that an atom can simultaneously exist in slow and high-energy state, known as asuperposition. ‘These behaviours break allthe usual rules of dynamics. Is there any reason to think ‘thermodynamics isexempt? Onlyin the past five years oso have we had thetools to probe ‘this question. Take the work of Tobias Schaetz atthe Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. In2016, he described anexperiment ooking ations inside crystal. He gave them some energy and watched how they cooled Unlike cupof coffee, which cools gradually, the ions seemed to lose energy fora while, but then the energy suddenly bounced back.It is proof of what we had suspected: therales of classicalthermodynamics don't always apply inthe quantum word. Unfortunately, itis tricky to pindown what laws do apply. This is because there are no obvious quantum equivalentsof classical thermodynamic concepts like heat or entropy. They arethe ultimate product of the motions of many particles; sohhow do youbegin to thinkof analogues when you aredealing with Jjustone ortwo particles? ‘Well, never mind. thought Twoukl make « 34 | NewScientist 7 Apil2018 @ieltszone_uz quantum version ofa heat engineanyway. Ilisrathera different enginefrom anything, Carnot would have been familiar with, but the principles are the same.The Idea wasto set up pairs of organicmolecules and raise ‘themtoa high energy level by shining light onthem.Leftalone,the molecules will return ‘toaslightly lowerenergy level, re-emitting. light ofa different frequency as they doso, “Here’stheimportant part. fwe set up theexperiment just right, theemitted light won't carry any information that “Quantum thermodynamics may mean time can tick In two directions” could tell us which ofthe two molecules tcame from. According to quantum theory, ‘this forcesthem to become entangled, so ‘that when one dropsto the lower energy. level,the other one automatically does ‘00, with both emitting light in unison in «process called superradiance. fexpected that this quantum engine would still be subject toenergy leakages inthe manner Carnot identified nearly 200 years ago. But because of the superradianee,itshould transfer energy faster, makingit more au BEEE ane Lt Eaaee efficient than a non-quantum engine. ‘Working with my two experimentalist colleagues, Tristan Farrow and Robert Taylor, completed acontrol experiment ast yearin, which the molecules weren't entangled. But just as we were putting the finishing touches tothe interesting version, we were scooped. In October 2017, my Oxford colleague Ian Walmsley and his team described an experiment similarto the one we had envisaged. In this engine, it was not organic ‘molecules doing the absorbingand emitting, but atoms trapped inside special cavities ina diamond. The atoms weren't entangled, but \wereina superposition of ahigh and low- energy state. And sureenough, Walmsley and this team saw that light was produced quicker than theclassical rules of thermodynamics predict Itisn'tyet entirely clear why this isso. And admittedly, the degree of violation istiny and wouldn't be useful in practice, Nonetheless, itis crucial first proof that quantum heat engines can bend those eastiron rules. Texpectthis machinecan be improved ‘upon and Iam excited about the future of quantum heat engines. Thethingthat first drew me into this game's my workon {quantum computers. There i plenty of talk about these futuristic machines, which operate using quantum bits, orqubits, and a See IELTS’ ZONE +998 97 130 68 22should be able ocrackall sorts of intractable calculations. But getting them to work involves cooling the hardware toextremely low temperatures, which demands vast amounts of energy. Descendants of Walmsley’s machine could help. After all,aheat engine converts heat into directed work, forexample to moveasteam engine's piston. Ifyoureverse that, youcan use directed work to pump heat away. The result isa quantum fridge. Gleb Maslennikovat the National University of Singapore and his colleagues are already experimenting with quantum fridges, ‘with promising indications that they too tbe more efficient than their classical counterparts Ws not just quantum computers that could benefit. Onemajorobstacle to further ‘miniaturising normal circuits isthat they ‘would overheat ifwe tried to cram components any closer. Better refrigeration is exactly what weneed, Ifyouthink quantum fridges sound handy, allow me tointroduce the quantum battery. ‘Aformer student of mine, Felix Binder, now at Nanyang Technological University in ‘Singapore, has shown that quantum batteries ‘can charge more quickly than normalones. Instead of movingionsaround, 3s traditional batteries do, these devices would ae @ieltszone_uz have electronicbits akin toa computer bit that can be cithercharged ornot. Under classical thermodynamics, theamount of energy used to charge the battery increases linearly with the numberof bits. But Binder has shown that if weentangletthe bits, the amount of energy needed for afull charge scales with the square root oftheir number. ‘This means that quantum battery with million bits would be fully charged in the time it would take to charge a1000-bit classical battery. Vittorio Pellegrini at the talian Institute of Technology in Genoaisoneresearcher hopingto build such a super-battery within afew years The untidiest room Butwe shouldn't think that quantum thermodynamics is only about creating. gizmos. Italso touches the most profound distinction thereis:lifeand death. Living things constantly strive against the second lawr ofthermodynamics, sucking in energy to ‘maintain theorderwithin theircells. Powering allthisareour bodies’ equivalent of heat engines: mitochondria, So here's anintriguing ‘question: given that natural selection tends toencourage efficiency, has biology evolved ‘quantum heat engines? There isa hot debate about whether any quantum effects are important in biology, but in my opinion it’s not crazy tothink that evolution would producethe most efficient engines possible. Even the low oftime might be recast by quantum thermodynamics. No physical law provides aresson why any natural processes can’t go backwards ~except the second law of thermodynamics. Its insistence that entropy IELTS’ ZONE Rule breaker: ‘Adiamond-based ‘uantumheatengine atthe University of Oxford, ‘must increase leads many physicists to suspect that time somehow arises from entropy changes Inclassicalterms,entropy makes Intuitive sense. For example, classical thermodynamics saysthe universe must beatleast as disorderedas its partsare. This islike sayingthat the overall messinessof ‘house, perhaps quantified asthe amount of energy neededto tidy it up, can't beless than the messiness of the untidiest roam, ‘Thepicture would be radically different ifthe universe obeysthe laws of quantum thermodynamics. True, wedon'tknow exactly what these are yet. But wedo know from the ‘equations of quantum theory that the overall amount of disorder intheuniverse must remain constant. What's more, quantum, "uncertainty forbids us from gaining fll Information about the states of individual partsofthe universe, meaning that some partscan be more disordered than the whole, ‘This could mean that if you look atthe universeas whole, entropy doesn’t change and sotheres notime. But lookat small patches where entropy is changingand time startsticking Because things don’thavetoadd up everywhere, allthetime, its even possible that the arrowsof time flow indifferent directionsin different parts of the universe. Itisonly by carefully probingthequantum foundationsof thermodynamicsthat we will discern whether any of thisisan accurate picture of reality. That's why quantum heat engines are so interesting, [can't wait to put minethrough its paces. ‘Viatko Veoral spiysistat he Unversity ot (Orford, UK. and the Nationa Uriversity of Singapore 7Apsil2018| NewScientis 135 +998 97 130 68 22