
Quantum microphone counts particles of sound - nabla9
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/07/24/quantum-microphone-counts-particles-sound/
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petermcneeley
> “Quantum mechanics tells us that position and momentum can’t be known
> precisely – but it says no such thing about energy,” Safavi-Naeini said.
> “Energy can be known with infinite precision.”

There is actually a time-energy uncertainty relation.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle)

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dangirsh
The original quote is too ambiguous for me to parse, but I feel compelled to
mention that we should be careful with time-energy uncertainty. Time is
usually not considered an observable in quantum theory, so it can be tricky to
talk about time uncertainty.

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nabla9
Resolving the energy levels of a nanomechanical oscillator
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1386-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1386-x)

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peter_d_sherman
This is 23rd Century Technology.

Let me explain.

See, the general pattern here is transducer + miniaturization. Maybe that
makes for a microphone if you apply it to sound, but what I would like to see
is the ability to fabricate ultra-small transducers for every known wavelength
/ electromagnetic spectrum phenomena.

Then for Act II... put those suckers in an array...

Can anybody say Star Trek Tricorder?

Actually, even a would-be Tricorder is a limited application... the real
applications range from everything from electron microscopes to
radiotelescopes, and everything in between.

Reversed, you could possibly get different types of field modulation out of
such an array... need an electromagnetic field of whatever frequency and form
for whatever purpose? That is, a universal field generator?

First step, right here.

Not just brilliant, but utterly, utterly, utterly brilliant!

This is my new #1 favorite EVER, on HN!

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wwarner
I find this totally amazing. This feels like it could be an extremely
sensitive and fast signaling channel. I wonder what the relationship of these
atomic vibrations have to the microscopic behavior of electric current. I.e.
can current be described as phonons traveling through metal?

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avsteele
Perhaps of interest as an aside:

In trapped ion quantum systems the shared motional phonons ("sound quanta")
are how 2-qubit gates are effected. If I remember the steps correctly:

1) Cool a string of ions to their motional ground state in a shared harmonic
potential (the ion trap) 2) Issue laser pulses to ion 1 to create an entangled
state that couples the ion's internal excited state to 1 quanta of one of the
shared motional phonon mode 3) Issue a similar laser pulse to ion 2, this one
exciting it conditional on the presence of the motional phonon

Now your two ions are entangled.

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Koshkin
> _Like unruly inmates, the trapped phonons rattle the walls of their prisons_

This is pure poetry!

