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The story…

The quantum revolution

Learn language related to…

experiments

Need-to-know language…

cusp - on the edge of or very close to

defects - faults; problems

harness - to control something to use its power

inextricably - in a way that is impossible to separate

grasp - understand; comprehend

Answer this…

What can the 'quantum random number generator' be used for?

Transcript

So much modern technology already relies on light. But there's still more potential locked away in these beams. In a lab in Cambridge, this team says it's working on the next ‘light revolution’.

Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, Nu-Quantum

First, we had lamps, then we had lasers, which completely revolutionised our lives and our technology, and now we may be at the cusp of the third stage in the history of light. We have single photon sources - devices that can emit one particle of light at a time.

And that is the key here – being able to separate off those individual light particles. I’ll explain why that’s important in a second, but first, here’s how they do it.

Richard Westcott, BBC Journalist

On this disc here - you can't see it - is a crystal that is one atom thick, and it's got little defects on it - the size of an atom. And when you fire a laser at those defects, they ping out individual photons - individual particles of light. And you can actually see them here - these bright yellow areas are the defects where the photons are coming out.

This is where it gets weird. By singling out photons, you can unlock what's known as the ‘quantum world’, where very, very small things behave very differently.

You’ll need to pay attention to this bit.

Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, Nu-Quantum

So there are two main properties that we can harness. The first one is ‘super position’ and the second one is ‘entanglement’. ‘Super position’ is a particle being in two states at the same time – so being up and down at the same time. ‘Entanglement’ – is two particles being inextricably linked. So, no matter where they are in the Universe - whatever happens to one affects the other one.

So, say one is up - the other one has to be down – or the other way around. When we put two… these two effects together, we can build something like a quantum computer – which is orders of magnitude more powerful than anything we can compute today.

Carmen's tech singles out the photons. You then need Matthew’s sensors to detect them. So what about practical uses?

The quantum world is the only place you can generate a genuinely random number.

So the team’s now building a ‘quantum random number generator’ to encrypt things securely online.

Dr Matthew Applegate, Nu-Quantum

We are at the start of the quantum revolution, if you like - this is going to be like the Industrial Revolution we believe. What we've done is develop room-temperature components which are much simpler than the current state of the art – which will unlock the great potential of quantum technologies.

From next level computing to better cameras - more accurate clocks, and a more secure internet - the surreal quantum world is hard to grasp, but the benefits are simple.

Did you get it?

What can the ‘quantum random number generator’ be used for?

The ‘quantum random number generator’ can be used to make things more secure online.