The Quantum Theory: Can Quantum technologies revolutionize the 21st Century and ultimately change our lives?

Good day, my fellow Steemian. It's been a great honour for me to be writing on this wonderful platform once again. Thanks for the comments and upvotes. I promise to write more quality content post and help the community @steemstem and its sub-community @stemng move forward with the best of my ability. Enough said, today I'll be writing on the quantum theory and whether its technologies can actually revolutionize our world of the 21st century and thereby enhancing our lives in general.

Introduction

One of the main attention of physicists is to understand and apply the concept of Einstein's relativity theory, and that understanding and applications have made them to explore the world far and beyond expectations. The world I'm talking of is none other than the world of objects moving at a speed close to the speed of light.

Now, we are about to discuss another world but which supersedes the world mentioned above. It is the sub-atomic world; a world of particles smaller than an atom. In this world, we are going to be confronted with many surprises, that though they may look kinda weird but have led the physicists to have a deeper view and understanding of how real this world can be.

Quantum Theory

Quantum physics, as the topic of my discussion, comes to give answers to many important questions like why do Silver conduct electricity and wood does not? What makes the stars shine at night? How do microelectronic devices work? etc. Quantum physics also gives reasons and considerations to some other discipline like chemistry and biochemistry, which really makes it important to understand the theory if we want to understand life itself.

^{A quantum processor, for a quantum computer, with three quantum bits (qubits) and three read-out cavities, fabricated in May 2017 at the Nanofabrication Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology.
Author: Anita Fors (Chalmers); CC BY-SA 4.0}

Quantum physics comes with a lot of predictions, some of which seem bizarre even to the philosophers and physicists that study its foundation. But as the time goes by, a series of experiments have been done which proved the theory right and that has also exposed the physicist to more stranger aspects of the theory. The quantum world is a like a big ocean with so many fishes to catch and a whole lot to learn from that will challenge our childhood knowledge and perception about the world. Let's start this jolly ride by first trying to understand the concept of a "photon".

Photons, the quantum of light

Furthering more on what I've written above about quantum physics, I'd say generally that it's the study of the microscopic (very small) world. A world where many quantities are studied only in small elementary amounts and are eventually said to be quantized. The sub-atomic particles that are connected with such a quantity are known as the Quantum of that quantity which is having quanta as its plural. The term "Quantum" can also be referred to as fixed amounts as distinguished from a continuous quantity.

In 1902, Max Planck was able to show that experimental observations in the radiation emitted by substances could be explained on the basis that the energy from such bodies is emitted in separate or discrete packets of energy known as energy quanta and it has a value of hf. A few years after Planck's experimentation, Einstein propounded that light or generally speaking all electromagnetic radiation are quantized and they exist in basic amounts that are now called "Photons". Although this pronouncement of Einstein might seem strange because what we have usually known light to be is a sinusoidal wave having a frequency f, wavelength λ and a speed c, such that:

f=c/λ ..............equation 1

So, if light is a classical wave which comprises both the magnetic and electric fields, then how come this type of wave consists of the elementary amount of particles (quanta)? And what even makes it more interesting is the fact that the concept of a photon happens to be more mystifying than what Einstein had even thought. And because of that, till now its understanding is still very low. I'll do my best in shedding more light to that in this post. Just relax and follow me as I roll.

According to Einstein, the energy of a quantum of light having a frequency, f is given as:

E = hf ...............equation 2

This is known as the Planck's theory of radiation where h is the planck constant having a value of 6.63 × 10^-34 J.s = 4.14 × 10^-15 eV.s

The least amount of energy that a light wave can have is hf which is the energy of just one photon. For a light wave of more energy, then the amount of energy it can possess will only be a multiple of hfs i.e 2hf, 3hf, 4hf, etc. meaning that there can never be light radiations whose energy lies between these values.

Einstein still went ahead and posited that a process by which an object or matter either absorb (absorption event) or emit light (emission event) occurs only within the atoms of the objects. By so doing, when the atom absorbs a light of certain frequency, there is a release of energy (hf) in the form of a photon from that light to the atom.

Also, when an atom emits a light of certain frequency, there is a transfer of energy also in the form of a photon but in this case, it's from the atom to the light. In a nutshell, what this means is that we can have both absorption and emission of photons by atoms in an object. An object which is made up of many atoms will have many photon absorptions (an example is a sunglass) or photon emissions (like we have in a lamp). Nevertheless, each of either the absorption or emission event still requires the taking of an amount of energy which equals to that of a single photon of light.

Quantum technologies in the 21st Century?

Among the questions posed to Prof. Rainer Blatt, a famous quantum physicist at the 66th Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting of June 30th, 2016 was "whether quantum technology is the future of 21st century."
Without mincing words, Blatt said

No doubt, quantum technology is moving the technology world at an alarming rate to an extent that the impact it will have in the future can't be measured yet.
Quantum technology has every potential to be at the forefront of science and technology in the 21st century. Its applications are most especially useful in the fields of computing, simulations, and metrology. In spite of all these, a whole lot of money still needs to be invested in the project to move it further from the development stage.^source

Prof. Blatt was also asked his views concerning what many researchers were saying about the emergence of the second quantum revolution after the first that has already laid the platform for emerging developments in the computer world (computer chips), MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), lasers and communications. The Professor explained vividly that the second quantum revolution is built on a term called "entanglement". Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon whereby the quantum states of objects are described with respect to each other irrespective of their spatial separations.^source It's a phenomenon that most researchers are very familiar with even as far back as 80 years ago.

Till now, quantum technologies such as being used in computing and communications derive their usefulness from the phenomenon of wave-particle duality, a basis from quantum physics. The quantum entanglement, though has been known for long was just experimented during the last few decades and has presently formed the basis for many new applications in quantum technology. It is majorly beneficial to the world of quantum computing and communications. In a nutshell, the emergence of this second quantum revolution will bring about the cognizance and perception of these new possibilities highlighted above.

Also in the Professor's response to the question asked on when the second quantum revolution will start to make products that will be strongly demanded in the market, he made it known that there's already a market for quantum technological products and applications in the field of computing as quantum processors. It's marketable too in the field of metrology in providing very sensitive sensors. There will surely be more uses and applications of quantum technologies as the technology is becoming widely available.

Furthermore, the quantum technology will lead to more improved usage which will have a whole lot of positive improvement in the science world. Taking, for instance, lasers which were seen back then in 1960 as a solution to an unknown problem has now been a tool whereby nearly everyone cannot do without. Quantum technologies too also have that type of potential and it's expected in the coming future for their various products to be widely understood and used to solve many problems.

How the understanding of Quantum Theories can change our lives

The development of quantum theory has been made possible by the efforts of the great minds that pioneered it and their discoveries can give attestation to my assertions. Taking, for instance, the discovery of the electron in the year 1897 that made us know that small particles make up an atom, and which was later followed by Max Plancks's proposition in 1900 that energy was made up of small individual units called quanta. From Planck's theorem, he derived a universal constant known as the Planck's constant which became very useful in quantum mechanics to determine the size of quanta. Albert Einstein continued from where Planck stopped and proposed in 1905 that both the energy and radiation of an electromagnetic wave (e.g light) are also quantized and also that light can be described as a photon having a discrete energy.

Ernest Rutherford came in 1911 to discover the mass of an atom inside a nucleus. Neil Bohr came to improve on Rutherford's model by adding different orbits for electrons to be able to spin around a nucleus. De Broglie brought about the concept of the wave-particle duality of matter in 1924 to explain that both matter and energy behave like either waves or particles depending on the conditions they are subjected to. Other great scientists like Pauli (and his Exclusion principle), Heisenberg (and his uncertainty principle), just to name a few have also since contributed to the success of the idea of quantum theory.

All these will make us know that the quantum theory is the contributions of many great minds put together and the credit can't be given to a single individual. And in the years to come, the understanding of this theory will allow us to completely change our world in ways never been thought of before. Amongst the miracle of quantum theory is the Superconductor, a major tool in the manufacture of maglev (magnetic levitating) trains.^{read more} Also, the understanding of the quantum theory can lead us to develop some materials to create kinds of stuff like a cloaking device. Other successes could also include meta-materials built to prevent seismic waves on erected structures, the creation of super lenses for taking pictures that's far below the wavelength of light and the construction of extremely thin sound-proof walls.

^{An invisibility cloak using optical camouflage by Susumu Tachi of the University of Tokyo
Author: Z22, CC BY-SA 3.0}

The future applications of Quantum Technologies

In the coming years, the word quantum will be heard virtually everywhere and some of its technologies but not limited to are:

Quantum Computing: The use of quantum phenomena to build a quantum computer that's capable of solving all problems a normal computer can't. It will be able to break any forms of algorithm and provide very quick solutions to all mathematical problem with a speed of a million times faster than a common computer.

Quantum Cryptography: the use of quantum mechanics to decrypt and encrypt messages thereby ensuring safe and secure communications. A good example is the QKD (Quantum Key Distribution).

Quantum Dots (QD): are very small semiconductor crystals of nanometre dimension and are so small that their conductive properties differ to that of larger crystals. They are mainly used in nanotechnology for the production of many applications. ^source

Quantum Wires (Nanowires) or Carbon Nanotubes: This is a very small wire (with a diameter of about 10^-9metres) which allows the direct flow of electrons making use of the effect of quantum in the process. An example is Yttrium Barium Copper oxide (YBCO); a superconductor and Silicon nanowires (SiNWs); a semi-conductor.^source

Other future applications of quantum technologies are in Quantum optics, Quantum energy, Meta-materials, Teleportation, Quantum refrigerators, Personal fabricators, Solar panels, Nanotechnology, Communications, Biotechnology, and Medicine. Needless to say, we have only exploited a very little of these technologies and with time will master the usage of the rest.

So, I'll like to conclude by saying yes, the Quantum technology has come to stay and revolutionize the 21st century and our future is bright in terms of these awesome technologies once they are fully harnessed.

Thanks for reading.

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^References

^{Photons and Matter waves
Quantum entanglement
Cloaking device
Quantum Dots
A superconducting YBCO
Quantum wires
Quantum technologies revolutionize the 21st century
Planck and the Quantum nature of light
The Bizzare and wonderful world of Quantum theory}

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