#HYPERBOLIC MOTION IN CURVED SPACE TIME FULL#

They’ve laid a theoretical framework for adding qubits-the basic building blocks of quantum computers-to serve as matter in a curved space made of a circuit full of flowing microwaves. Now, in a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters on January 3, 2022, the same collaboration between the groups of JQI Fellows Alicia Kollár and Alexey Gorshkov, who is also Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, expands the potential applications of the technique to include simulating more intricate physics. Our three-dimensional world doesn’t even have enough space for a two-dimensional negatively curved space. In particular, the team looked at hyperbolic lattices that represent spaces-called negatively curved spaces-that have more space than can fit in our everyday “flat” space. A previous collaboration between researchers at JQI explored using labyrinthine circuits made of superconducting resonators to simulate the physics of certain curved spaces (see the previous story for additional background information and motivation of this line of research). Understanding curved spaces is important to expanding our knowledge of the universe, but it is fiendishly difficult to study curved spaces in a lab setting (even using simulations). Something as straightforward as defining a straight line requires careful consideration.

When space curves (as happens dramatically near a black hole), sizes and directions defy normal intuition. One of the mind-bending ideas that physicists and mathematicians have come up with is that space itself-not just objects in space-can be curved. (Right image) A quantum state formed by a qubit (grey dot containing parallel black lines) and an attached microwave photon that can be found at one of the intersections of the grid representing a curved space. In both images, the darker colors show where photons are more likely to be found. (Left image) Microwave photons that create an interaction between pairs of qubits (black dots on the edge) in a hyperbolic space are most likely to travel along the shortest path (dotted line).

Hyperbolic motion in curved space time