Quantum Magic – Quantum Measurement Can Cool Things Down

Measuring is quite “cool” when it comes to quantum mechanics. So cool that it may even work as a cooling machine. It may be used in the future when designing cooling for quantum chips.

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Anyone who knows anything about quantum mechanics will know that measurement is quite an uneasy topic for it. It doesn’t work the same way as it does in classical physics where you just take a measuring device and see what the result is. In quantum mechanics measurement affects quantum events plus quantum physicists aren’t really in agreement how exactly it affects the result. Despite that, scientists are looking at quantum measurement and are finding incredible things.

Michele Campisi from Universita Degli Studi Firenze in Italy recently proved that quantum measurement doesn’t have to be as invasive as we thought. They looked at quantum thermodynamics and how quantum phenomena affect thermodynamics of devices on the nanoscale. They found that quantum measurement can be used. More specifically it may be used to run a cooling machine.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that warmth does naturally move from warmer objects to colder ones. So far we know of two ways how to reverse this process. Either we have to utilize outside force or we have to introduce a Maxwell demon that directs to flow of warmth.

The scientists figured out a third way how to reverse the natural flow of warmth thanks to quantum mechanics. They used invasive quantum measurement as an engine for cooling and they call it quantum measurement cooling. They developed a two-qubit thermal device that could be made into a cooling device fairly easily.

Such a device could be used in many different applications. For example, it could be used in quantum computers that require very cool temperatures to work. Now the scientists are looking for more teams to work with them to create functional quantum cooling devices.

Sources:

• https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.070603
• https://phys.org/news/2019-03-quantum-fuel-cooling.html

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