Physicists create ‘holographic wormhole’ inside quantum computer

(inqnet/A. Mueller (Caltech))

Scientists have created a “holographic wormhole” inside a quantum computer for the first time.

The pioneering experiment allows researchers to study the ways that theoretical wormholes and quantum physics interact, and could help solve some of the most difficult and perplexing parts of science.

The wormhole is theoretical: researchers did not produce an actual rupture in space and time. But the experimental creation of one inside the quantum computer – which saw a message sent between two simulated blackholes – nonetheless allows scientists to examine how they might work, after almost 100 years of theory.

Wormholes are bridges across spacetime, which connect two otherwise remote parts of the cosmos. They have not been seen, but scientists have been speculating for years about their existence and how they might work.

More recently, scientists have proposed that they might be connected to quantum physics. An unusual phenomenon where two particles can be connected to each over vast distances, known as quantum entanglement, could be equivalent to the wormholes that scientists have been searching for for years, scientists have recently suggested.

And even more recently, in 2017, scientists have suggested that the connection between quantum physics and wormholes might go even further: that they might be linked in the idea of traversable wormholes, through which energy can travel. That could be akin to quantum teleportation, where information is sent across space using quantum entanglement and which has been demonstrated in real life.

The new research saw scientists combine those concepts. It is an experimental test of the idea that it is possible to see information travelling across space either in the form of gravity, as in a wormhole, or in quantum physics and quantum entanglement.

To do so, scientists took a qubit – the quantum equivalent of the “bits” that represent the basic building blocks of conventional computers – and watched as it emerged from another system. It traveled between the two different systems via quantum teleportation.

In other words, the quantum information was able to pass through a traversable wormhole. It behaved as expected both in terms of gravity and quantum physics, the researchers report.

The experiment – and quantum computers more generally – are still at a relatively basic stage. In the future, the scientists hope to keep testing the ideas on more advanced quantum hardware that would allow them to do more complex experiments.

“The relationship between quantum entanglement, spacetime, and quantum gravity is one of the most important questions in fundamental physics and an active area of theoretical research,” said Maria Spiropulu, who led the study. “We are excited to take this small step toward testing these ideas on quantum hardware and will keep going.“

The findings are reported in a new paper, ‘Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor’, published in Nature.