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A holographic wormhole traversed in a quantum computer

A system of nine quantum bits has been used to simulate a state known as a holographic wormhole, a concept that features in attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics with the general theory of relativity.
  1. Adam R. Brown

    1. Adam R. Brown is at X, Mountain View, California 94043, USA, and the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, California.

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  2. Leonard Susskind

    1. Leonard Susskind is at X, Mountain View, California 94043, USA, and the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, California.

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The holographic principle is a guide in our quest to understand how to combine the two most celebrated theories of modern physics — quantum mechanics and general relativity. According to this principle, theories that include both quantum mechanics and gravity can be exactly equivalent to other theories that involve quantum mechanics but not gravity. Such an alternative description is known as a dual, and has fewer dimensions than its gravitational counterpart — much like how a hologram projected on a 2D surface displays a 3D image. Writing in Nature, Jafferis et al.1 report using a quantum computer to generate a state that mimics a hologram whose dual is an entity known as a wormhole, and then evolving this state to simulate a message traversing the wormhole.

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Nature 612, 41-42 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03832-z

References

  1. Jafferis, D. et al. Nature 612, 51–55 (2022).

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  8. Brown, A. R. et al. Preprint at https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1911.06314 (2019).

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  10. Shapoval, I., Su, V. P., de Jong, W., Urbanek, M. & Swingle, B. Preprint at https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2205.14081 (2022).

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Competing Interests

We have appointments at X, which is part of Alphabet; this is the same parent company that owns Google’s quantum-computing division, where the second and seventh authors work. Additionally, the authors described their results to us in a video meeting, after the paper had been through one round of review, and we gave general feedback; they have acknowledged this input in their paper.

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