Dec 18 2017
Published by
NYU Shanghai
NYU Shanghai Physics Postdoctoral Fellow Chandrashekar Radhakrishnan recently won the second prize in the Outstanding Scientific Paper Competition in Pudong New Area for his research paper titled “Distribution of Quantum Coherence in Multipartite Systems.” This is the ninth time that the competition was held.
The Competition is open to researchers working in high-tech enterprises, research universities, institutions and science and technology associations in Pudong New Area. Twenty-three outstanding papers were awarded out of 323 submissions.
Physical objects exhibit dual nature in quantum mechanics by behaving as waves and particles. This dual nature causes the systems to behave in ways which are quite different from classical physics. Entanglement is one such form of quantum behavior, and the wave nature of the systems gives rise to a physical property called coherence, which is an even more fundamental property.
“Coherence is a quantum nature which is present in a particle and can also arise due to interactions between them.” said Dr. Radhakrishnan, explaining his award-winning paper.
“To understand the difference between entanglement and coherence, consider two quantum mechanical objects. Entanglement exists only between two physical objects. In contrast, coherence can exist between two physical objects as well as within one physical object, that is, coherence has both local and non-local properties,” he explained.
The paper presents a novel way to examine the distribution of coherence in multipartite systems and shows that coherence in multipartite states can be distributed in several ways throughout a quantum system.
The research result was published in Physical Review Letters in 2016, one of the top journals in physics. The corresponding author of the award-winning paper is Tim Byrnes, an Assistant Professor of Physics at NYU Shanghai, and a member of the NYU-ECNU Institute of Physics at NYU Shanghai.
Dr. Radhakrishnan is a member of Professor Byrnes’s research team. The Byrnes’s lab has produced original work in the forefront of physics in areas such as quantum information technology, cohesion State physics, and AMO (atomic, molecular, and optical). In their recent work, they have found that the internal quantum nature of a particle has a longer lifetime compared to the ones arising out of interactions between them. More research updates about the team could be find at: http://nyu.timbyrnes.net/.
Journal Reference:
Radhakrishnan, C., Parthasarathy, M., Jambulingam, S. & Byrnes, T. Distribution of quantum coherence in multipartite systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 150504, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.150504(2016).