Physicists confirm quantum entanglement persists between top quarks, the heaviest known fundamental particles
An experiment by a group of physicists led by University of Rochester physics professor Regina Demina has produced a significant result related to quantum entanglement—an effect that Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”
Entanglement concerns the coordinated behavior of miniscule particles that have interacted but then moved apart. Measuring properties—like position or momentum or spin—of one of the separated pair of particles instantaneously changes the results of the other particle, no matter how far the second particle has drifted from its twin. In effect, the state of one entangled particle, or qubit, is inseparable from the other.
Quantum entanglement has been observed between stable particles, such as photons or electrons.
But Demina and her group broke new ground in that they found, for the first time, entanglement to persist between unstable top quarks and their antimatter partners at distances farther than what can be covered by information transferred at the speed of light. Specifically, the researchers observed spin correlation between the particles.
Hence, the particles demonstrated what Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance.”
