The futurist Arthur C. Clarke famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Well, a team of physicists just showed that a common particle production method at the Large Hadron Collider produces just that.
The Large Hadron Collider has reliably produced some of the most compelling discoveries in particle physics for over a decade. Its most famous contribution to science is the observation of the Higgs Boson in 2012, but the giant particle accelerator is a integral component of particle physics infrastructure, where new insights into the infinitesimal bits of matter and fundamental laws that govern our universe are precisely interrogated.
The team—the White brothers, twin physicists at Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Adelaide in Australia, respectively—published a paper this week in Physical Review D investigating the manifestation of a property, literally known as magic, in collisions at the LHC.
“Our work explores the concept of ‘magic’ in top quarks, which essentially measures how well-suited particles are for building powerful quantum computers,” said Chris White, in a Queen Mary, University of London release. Top quarks are one of the six types—or flavors—of quark, and the heaviest particle in the Standard Model.
Magic is the measurement of how difficult a quantum state is for a classical computer to simulate. The idea is that with particularly complex problems, classical computers are of little use. In a nod to Clarke, the science at work is essentially magic to classical computers—though I should note that the use of the term “magic” in hard physics is traced back to J.E. Klauder in 1972.
In their study, the brothers studied the behavior of top quarks and the likelihood of the LHC producing magic top quarks, as defined by the particles’ velocity and direction. The detectors of the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid experiments at the LHC can measure these properties.
“It seems particularly timely to explore whether the property of magic is a natural inevitability at current collider experiments,” the twins wrote in the paper. “Put more simply: does nature produce magic top quarks and, if not, why not?”
Electric Light Orchestra has a song entitled “Strange Magic,” which, at the risk of bastardizing Jeff Lynne’s lofty lyrics, I (at my most cynical) feel is redundant. Magic is inherently strange to us—that’s why we call it magic. But perhaps the strangest magic is that which describes the limit of the world we understand, from the phenomena experts are still working to unpack.
“The higher the magic, the more we need quantum computers to describe the behavior,” said Martin White, a physicist at the University of Adelaide and co-author of the study, in a university release. “Studying the magic properties of quantum systems generates significant insights into the development and potential uses of quantum computers.”
Quantum computers operate on quantum bits (or qubits), which are like ordinary computer bits except their values can be interpreted as 0 and 1 simultaneously, a quirk of the quantum realm that enables the computers to consider more solutions to a problem faster than a classical computer. The ultimate goal—and indeed, expectation—is that quantum computers will be able to solve problems that classical computers cannot, a milestone that quantum scientists are racing towards, sometimes with unconventional approaches.
“This discovery is not just about the heaviest particles in the universe, it’s about unlocking the potential of a revolutionary new computing paradigm,” Martin White said.
Over the summer, the quantum computing company Quantinuum announced a computer which it said outperformed a Google computer’s landmark result demonstrating “quantum supremacy” 100-fold.
Earlier this month, Google debuted its latest quantum chip, Willow, which the company said can perform calculations in five millions that would take one of the world’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years. Google’s quantum research team also demonstrated a remarkable aspect of their quantum system: an exponential reduction in the computer’s error rate as the quantum computer grew in size. Suffice to say, this race towards a brave new world in quantum information is in an upswell.
The LHC came back online in 2022, after a three-year hiatus for routine system maintenance and upgrades. Last year, scientists working on CERN’s CMS experiment—the heaviest experiment at the LHC—published new progress in the search for dark (or hidden) photons, a dark matter candidate.
All this comes in advance of the upcoming High Luminosity-LHC, which will increase the brilliance of the facility tenfold and increase the number of Higgs bosons physicists can study by an order of magnitude. The revamped LHC is expected to be ready for operation by 2029; for now, the LHC’s third run is underway through 2026.
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