Scientists, including Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrdinger, first discovered the phenomenon of entanglement in the 1930s. In 1972, John Clauser and Stuart Freedman were the first to prove experimentally that two widely separated particles can be entangled.

A Q&A with Caltech alumnus John Clauser on his first experimental proof of quantum entanglement.

When scientists, including Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrdinger, first discovered the phenomenon of entanglement in the 1930s, they were perplexed. Disturbingly, entanglement required two separated particles to remain connected without being in direct contact. In fact, Einstein famously called entanglement spooky action at a distance, because the particles seemed to be communicating faster than the speed of light.

Born on December 1, 1942, John Francis Clauser is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular the ClauserHorneShimonyHolt inequality. Clauser was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.

To explain the bizarre implications of entanglement, Einstein, along with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR), argued that hidden variables should be added to quantum mechanics. These could be used to explain entanglement, and to restore locality and causality to the behavior of the particles. Locality states that objects are only influenced by their immediate surroundings. Causality states that an effect cannot occur before its cause, and that causal signaling cannot propagate faster than light speed. Niels Bohr famously disputed EPRs argument, while Schrdinger and Wendell Furry, in response to EPR, independently hypothesized that entanglement vanishes with wide-particle separation.

Unfortunately, at the time, no experimental evidence for or against quantum entanglement of widely separated particles was available. Experiments have since proven that entanglement is very real and fundamental to nature. Furthermore, quantum mechanics has now been proven to work, not only at very short distances but also at very great distances. Indeed, Chinas quantum-encrypted communications satellite, Micius, (part of the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) research project) relies on quantum entanglement between photons that are separated by thousands of kilometers.

John Clauser standing with his second quantum entanglement experiment at UC Berkeley in 1976. Credit: University of California Graphic Arts / Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

The very first of these experiments was proposed and executed by Caltech alumnus John Clauser (BS 64) in 1969 and 1972, respectively. His findings are based on Bells theorem, devised by CERN theorist John Bell. In 1964, Bell ironically proved that EPRs argument actually led to the opposite conclusion from what EPR had originally intended to show. Bell demonstrated that quantum entanglement is, in fact, incompatible with EPRs notion of locality and causality.

In 1969, while still a graduate student at Columbia University, Clauser, along with Michael Horne, Abner Shimony, and Richard Holt, transformed Bells 1964 mathematical theorem into a very specific experimental prediction via what is now called the ClauserHorneShimonyHolt (CHSH) inequality (Their paper has been cited more than 8,500 times on Google Scholar.) In 1972, when he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Clauser and graduate student Stuart Freedman were the first to prove experimentally that two widely separated particles (about 10 feet apart) can be entangled.

Clauser went on to perform three more experiments testing the foundations of quantum mechanics and entanglement, with each new experiment confirming and extending his results. The FreedmanClauser experiment was the first test of the CHSH inequality. It has now been tested experimentally hundreds of times at laboratories around the world to confirm that quantum entanglement is real.

Clausers work earned him the 2010 Wolf Prize in physics. He shared it with Alain Aspect of the Institut d Optique and Ecole Polytechnique and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences for an increasingly sophisticated series of tests of Bells inequalities, or extensions thereof, using entangled quantum states, according to the award citation.

John Clauser at a yacht club. Clauser enjoys sailboat racing in his spare time. Credit: John Dukat

Here, John Clauser answers questions about his historical experiments.

In the 1960s and 70s, experimental testing of quantum mechanics was unpopular at Caltech, Columbia, UC Berkeley, and elsewhere. My faculty at Columbia told me that testing quantum physics was going to destroy my career. While I was performing the 1972 FreedmanClauser experiment at UC Berkeley, Caltechs Richard Feynman was highly offended by my impertinent effort and told me that it was tantamount to professing a disbelief in quantum physics. He arrogantly insisted that quantum mechanics is obviously correct and needs no further testing! My reception at UC Berkeley was lukewarm at best and was only possible through the kindness and tolerance of Professors Charlie Townes [PhD 39, Nobel Laureate 64] and Howard Shugart [BS 53], who allowed me to continue my experiments there.

In my correspondence with John Bell, he expressed exactly the opposite sentiment and strongly encouraged me to do an experiment. John Bells 1964 seminal work on Bells theorem was originally published in the terminal issue of an obscure journal, Physics, and in an underground physics newspaper, Epistemological Letters. It was not until after the 1969 CHSH paper and the 1972 FreedmanClauser results were published in the Physical Review Letters that John Bell finally openly discussed his work. He was aware of the taboo on questioning quantum mechanics foundations and had never discussed it with his CERN co-workers.

Part of the reason that I wanted to test the ideas was because I was still trying to understand them. I found the predictions for entanglement to be sufficiently bizarre that I could not accept them without seeing experimental proof. I also recognized the fundamental importance of the experiments and simply ignored the career advice of my faculty. Moreover, I was having a lot of fun doing some very challenging experimental physics with apparatuses that I built mostly using leftover physics department scrap. Before Stu Freedman and I did the first experiment, I also personally thought that Einsteins hidden-variable physics might actually be right, and if it is, then I wanted to discover it. I found Einsteins ideas to be very clear. I found Bohrs rather muddy and difficult to understand.

In truth, I really didnt know what to expect except that I would finally determine who was rightBohr or Einstein. I admittedly was betting in favor of Einstein but did not actually know who was going to win. Its like going to the racetrack. You might hope that a certain horse will win, but you dont really know until the results are in. In this case, it turned out that Einstein was wrong. In the tradition of Caltechs Richard Feynman and Kip Thorne [BS 62], who would place scientific bets, I had a bet with quantum physicist Yakir Aharonov on the outcome of the FreedmanClauser experiment. Curiously, he put up only one dollar to my two. I lost the bet and enclosed a two-dollar bill and congratulations when I mailed him a preprint with our results.

I was very sad to see that my own experiment had proven Einstein wrong. But the experiment gave a 6.3-sigma result against him [a five-sigma result or higher is considered the gold standard for significance in physics]. But then Dick Holt and Frank Pipkins competing experiment at Harvard (never published) got the opposite result. I wondered if perhaps I had overlooked some important detail. I went on alone at UC Berkeley to perform three more experimental tests of quantum mechanics. All yielded the same conclusions. Bohr was right, and Einstein was wrong. The Harvard result did not repeat and was faulty. When I reconnected with my Columbia faculty, they all said, We told you so! Now stop wasting money and go do some real physics. At that point in my career, the only value in my work was that it demonstrated that I was a reasonably talented experimental physicist. That fact alone got me a job at Lawrence Livermore National Lab doing controlled-fusion plasma physics research.

In order to clarify what the experiments showed, Mike Horne and I formulated what is now known as ClauserHorne Local Realism [1974]. Additional contributions to it were subsequently offered by John Bell and Abner Shimony, so perhaps it is more properly called BellClauserHorneShimony Local Realism. Local Realism was very short-lived as a viable theory. Indeed, it was experimentally refuted even before it was fully formulated. Nonetheless, Local Realism is heuristically important because it shows in detail what quantum mechanics is not.

Local Realism assumes that nature consists of stuff, of objectively real objects, i. e., stuff you can put inside a box. (A box here is an imaginary closed surface defining separated inside and outside volumes.) It further assumes that objects exist whether or not we observe them. Similarly, definite experimental results are assumed to obtain, whether or not we look at them. We may not know what the stuff is, but we assume that it exists and that it is distributed throughout space. Stuff may evolve either deterministically or stochastically. Local Realism assumes that the stuff within a box has intrinsic properties, and that when someone performs an experiment within the box, the probability of any result that obtains is somehow influenced by the properties of the stuff within that box. If one performs say a different experiment with different experimental parameters, then presumably a different result obtains. Now suppose one has two widely separated boxes, each containing stuff. Local Realism further assumes that the experimental parameter choice made in one box cannot affect the experimental outcome in the distant box. Local Realism thereby prohibits spooky action-at-a-distance. It enforces Einsteins causality that prohibits any such nonlocal cause and effect. Surprisingly, those simple and very reasonable assumptions are sufficient on their own to allow derivation of a second important experimental prediction limiting the correlation between experimental results obtained in the separated boxes. That prediction is the 1974 ClauserHorne (CH) inequality.

The 1969 CHSH inequalitys derivation had required several minor supplementary assumptions, sometimes called loopholes. The CH inequalitys derivation eliminates those supplementary assumptions and is thus more general. Quantum entangled systems exist that disagree with the CH prediction, whereby Local Realism is amenable to experimental disproof. The CHSH and CH inequalities are both violated, not only by the first 1972 FreedmanClauser experiment and my second 1976 experiment but now by literally hundreds of confirming independent experiments. Various labs have now entangled and violated the CHSH inequality with photon pairs, beryllium ion pairs, ytterbium ion pairs, rubidium atom pairs, whole rubidium-atom cloud pairs, nitrogen vacancies in diamonds, and Josephson phase qubits.

Testing Local Realism and the CH inequality was considered by many researchers to be important to eliminate the CHSH loopholes. Considerable effort was thus marshaled, as quantum optics technology improved and permitted. Testing the CH inequality had become a holy grail challenge for experimentalists. Violation of the CH inequality was finally achieved first in 2013 and again in 2015 at two competing laboratories: Anton Zeilingers group at the University of Vienna, and Paul Kwiats group at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. The 2015 experiments involved 56 researchers! Local Realism is now soundly refuted! The agreement between the experiments and quantum mechanics now firmly proves that nonlocal quantum entanglement is real.

One application of my work is to the simplest possible object defined by Local Realisma single bit of information. Local Realism shows that a single quantum mechanical bit of information, a qubit, cannot always be localized in a space-time box. This fact provides the fundamental basis of quantum information theory and quantum cryptography. Caltechs quantum science and technology program, the 2019 $1.28-billion U.S. National Quantum Initiative, and the 2019 $400 million Israeli National Quantum Initiative all rely on the reality of entanglement. The Chinese Micius quantum-encrypted communications satellite systems configuration is almost identical to that of the FreedmanClauser experiment. It uses the CHSH inequality to verify entanglements persistence through outer space.

My dad, Francis H. Clauser [BS 34, MS 35, PhD 37, Distinguished Alumni Award 66] and his brother Milton U. Clauser [BS 34, MS 35, PhD 37] were PhD students at Caltech under Theodore von Krmn. Francis Clauser was Clark Blanchard Millikan Professor of Engineering at Caltech (Distinguished Faculty Award 80) and chair of Caltechs Division of Engineering and Applied Science. Milton U. Clausers son, Milton J. Clauser [PhD 66], and grandson, Karl Clauser [BS 86] both went to Caltech. My mom, Catharine McMillan Clauser was Caltechs humanities librarian, where she met my dad. Her brother, Edwin McMillan [BS 28, MS 29], is a Caltech alum and 51 Nobel Laureate. The family now maintains Caltechs Milton and Francis Doctoral Prize awarded at Caltech commencements.

Originally posted here:

First Experimental Proof That Quantum Entanglement Is Real - SciTechDaily

Physicist Carlo Rovelli explains the strange principles of relational quantum mechanics - which says objects don't exist in their own right - and how it could unlock major progress in fundamental physics

By Michael Brooks

Carlo Rovelli at the Cornelia Parker exhibition, Tate Britain

David Stock

Carlo Rovelli stands in front of an exploding shed. Fragments of its walls and shattered contents parts of a childs tricycle, a record player, a shredded Wellington boot hang in mid-air behind him. I have come to meet the physicist and bestselling author at an exhibition at the Tate Britain art gallery in London. The scattered objects are the work of Cornelia Parker, one of the UKs most acclaimed contemporary artists, known for her large-scale installations that reconfigure everyday objects.

For Rovelli, based at Aix-Marseille University in France, Parkers work is meaningful because it mirrors his take on the nature of reality. I connect with the process: of her coming up with the idea, producing the idea, telling us about the idea and of us reacting to it, he tells me. We dont understand Cornelia Parkers work just by looking at it, and we dont understand reality just by looking at objects.

Rovelli is an advocate of an idea known as relational quantum mechanics, the upshot of which is that objects dont exist independently of each other. It is a concept that defies easy understanding, so Parkers reality-challenging exhibition seemed like it might be a helpful setting for a conversation about it and about what else Rovelli is up to. It is a happy coincidence that Parkers shed is called Cold Dark Matter, a reference to the unidentified stuff that is thought to make up most of the universe. Because Rovelli now thinks he knows how we might finally pin

Go here to see the original:

Carlo Rovelli on the bizarre world of relational quantum mechanics - New Scientist

The 2022 Physics Nobel Prize is misunderstood even by the Nobel prize committee itself. What the work of John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger has shown, building on John Bells ideas, isnt that quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by a deterministic, hidden variables theory. What it has shown is that quantum mechanics, as well as all of physics, is non-local. Spooky action at a distance, what Einstein had found disturbing about quantum mechanics, is real and emerging technologies depend on it, argues Tim Maudlin.

The presentation of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics to John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger is a bittersweet moment for those of us who work in the foundations of physics. It is mostly bittersweet because John Bell, whose brilliant theoretical work provided in impetus and basis for the experimental work done by the laureates, did not live long enough to receive this same recognition for his achievement.

SUGGESTED READINGQuantum Theory and Common Sense: It's ComplicatedBy TimMaudlin

Bell died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1990 at the age of 62. His seminal work was done in 1963, so this has been a long time coming. Bells work has rightly been characterized as the spark that fueled the second quantum revolution, arising from the appreciation of the potential technological usefulness of entanglement in quantum systems. But the primary focus of Bells work in 1963 was the related question of locality. Unfortunately, many news accounts of the implications of Bells work and the experiments based on itincluding the press release from the Nobel committee itselfhave not correctly recounted the situation. So the announcement is also bittersweet because it mischaracterizes what Bell did.

___

Einsteins main complaint about quantum theory was not the indeterminism. It was rather what he called spooky action-at-a-distance.

___

Albert Einstein did not like the orthodox, so-called Copenhagen understanding of quantum theory. His most oft-repeated and quotable complaint is that according to Copenhagen God plays dice with the universe, i.e. the fundamental physical laws are indeterministic and probabilistic rather than deterministic (as Newtons and Maxwells were). But Einsteins main complaint about quantum theory was not the indeterminism. It was rather what he called spooky action-at-a-distance. These two issues are related: in the Copenhagen approach (which postulates both that the mathematical wavefunction used to describe a system provides a complete physical description and that it suddenly collapses when a measurement is done) it is not just that the collapse is random and unpredictable, but that it has physical effects instantaneously far away from where the collapse occurred. For example, when a dot forms on a screen, indicating that a particle was found there, the wavefunction of the particle everywhere else in the universe is instantly reduced to zero. Einstein objected to this sudden universal physical change, not least because it would have to be produced faster than light. His objections began in the 1920s, when the new quantum theory was formulated.

___

Einsteins spooky action-at-a-distance amounted to the claim that what Alice does to her particle in her lab can have an instantaneous physical effect on the state of Bobs particle in his lab, arbitrarily far away.

___

In 1935, together with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, Einstein made the issue even more obvious and acute by discussing an experimental set-up using a pair of particles (rather than just one) prepared in a special sort of quantum state called an entangled state. According to the theory, these particles could be separated to an arbitrary distance from one another (one sent to Alice and the other to Bob) and separately experimented on. Einsteins spooky action-at-a-distance amounted to the claim that what Alice does to her particle in her lab can have an instantaneous physical effect on the state of Bobs particle in his lab, arbitrarily far away. What they argued was that the Copenhagen understanding of quantum theoryin which the wavefunction provides a complete physical description of the systemrequires such spooky action-at-a-distance. Why?

Two entagled particles: For Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, "spooky action at a distance" was not acceptable.

Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) constructed a wavefunction such that, although the outcome of a position measurement made by Alice cannot be predicted and so would be regarded as the outcome of an indeterministic and random process, it can be predicted with certainly by Bob on the basis of the outcome of his own observation of the position of his particle. According to Copenhagen, Bob can be in this position to make better predictions than Alice (from the original wavefunction) because his experiment has the effect of collapsing the wavefunction of the pair of particles and therefore, because they are entangled, changing the physical state of Alices. And since Bob (but not Alice) knows how the collapse occurred, he can make better predictions than she can.

EPR observed that this postulation of collapse, and its attendant spooky action, was completely unnecessary. It was only forced on the Copenhagen view because they insisted on the completeness of the wavefunction. Much more reasonable, they argued, is to assume that the outcomes of both Alices and Bobs experiments are determined by the local situation in their own labs, and all Bob is doing by his experiment is finding out about Alices particle, not changing the physical state of Alices particle. But to pursue this sort of account, one has to concede that the wavefunction does not provide a complete description of the system, which the Copenhagenists were unwilling to do.

This is how things stood for over two decades: EPR argued that to save locality and avoid spooky action-at-a-distance one had to postulate that a quantum system has physical characteristics (such as, for example, the exact position of a particle) that are not recorded or reflected in its wavefunction. These additional postulated physical characteristics came to be known as hidden variables (although, as Bell pointed out, it is a very misleading name since the additional variables better not be hidden if they are to help solve the problem).

___

Bell proved that even a deterministic "hidden variables" theory cannot save locality and replicate all the quantum predictions. Therefore no local theory, of any sort, can return the quantum predictions.

___

A critical event in our story occurs in 1952 when David Bohm, deeply influenced by discussions with Einstein, publishes a paper laying out an interpretation of quantum theory in terms of hidden variables, i.e. a theory that explicitly postulates the incompleteness of the wavefunction. The idea had already been discovered by Louis De Broglie in 1927, but he abandoned the theory for some time. The theory (sometimes called De Broglie/Bohm theory or pilot wave theory or Bohmian Mechanics) is deterministic, and so denies that God plays dice. And it is a hidden variables theory that makes the same predictions as the standard Copenhagen quantum theory. The article caught the attention of John Bell, who immediately appreciated what Bohm had accomplished. But the theory was also manifestly and undeniably non-local: it directly postulated spooky action-at-a-distance in its dynamics. In Bohms theory, Bobs experiment can indeed physically effect (and not just provide information about) the goings-on in Alices distant lab. So the theory was of no interest to Einstein, as it did not eliminate the non-locality.

SUGGESTED VIEWINGPlanck and the consciousness puzzleWith Catherine Heymans, Laura Mersini-Houghton, Patricia Churchland, Brian Greene, Amanda Gefter

It occurred to Bell to ask whether the achievement of Bohms theorythe determinism and general physical clarity of the theorycould somehow be retained but the non-locality eliminated. In 1963, on sabbatical, he had the time to look into the question and he discovered an astonishing fact. Bell considered experiments similar tobut also crucially different fromthe ones EPR had discussed. He could do this also due to Bohms help: Bohm, in his textbook on quantum theory, had reconfigured the EPR set-up to deal with a particles spin rather than its position or momentum, as EPR had. Since the spins of particles can be measured in any direction, that immediately suggests a whole universe of experimental possibilities. When Alice and Bob set their spin-measuring apparatuses in the same direction, they always get opposite results: one particle will be deflected up and the other down (although quantum theory does not predict which will go up and which down). So once again, when Bob sees the outcome in his lab, he can make better predictions about what Alice will see than Alice can. But if the two directions of the measuring devices are offset from each other, these perfect correlations slowly degrade.

Bell took a close look at exactly how they degrade and discovered an amazing thing: the full set of quantum mechanical predictions for these sorts of experiments cannot be reproduced by any local theory. The EPR correlations, of course, could be recovered by a local theory: it just had to be a deterministic and hence a hidden variables theory. But Bell proved that even a deterministic hidden variables theory cannot save locality and replicate all the quantum predictions. Therefore no local theory, of any sort, can return the quantum predictions. In other words, if quantum theory is predictively accurate in these cases, then locality is a lost cause. One must accept what Einstein called "spooky action-at-a-distance": what is done in one place makes a difference to how things happen in a location and time so far away that even light could not reach there in time.

___

The theoretical work by Bell and his successors yields only a conditional conclusion: if Bells inequality is violated in the lab, then nature itself must be non-local.

___

Bells mathematical result was extended and refined in various ways. Clauser, Michael Horne, Abner Shimony and Richard Holt relaxed Bells assumption of perfect correlations and derived the CHSH inequalities, a generalization of the original Bell inequality. No local physics can robustly produce violations of the CHSH inequality for experiments done far apart. Later, Daniel Greenburger, Michael Horne and Zeilinger derived the GHZ example, which involves three entangled particles rather than two. Again, no local theory can reproduce the quantum predictions for experiments done on the triple, and the relevant predictions are not statistical in nature: they are absolute.

The theoretical work by Bell and his successors yields only a conditional conclusion: if Bells inequality or the CHSH inequality is violated in the lab, then nature itself must be non-local. Quantum mechanics predicts such violations, but for many physicists that was just a good reason to expect the quantum-mechanical predictions to fail. Non-locality seemed too strange to accept, as it was for Einstein. But the final arbitration of the question had to be left to the experimentalists, some of whom have just received the Nobel prize for their work.

___

Unfortunately, much of this history has been garbled in the public discussion of Bells work and its experimental tests. The Noble prize committee itself gets it wrong in its press release.

___

The first tests were carried out by Clauser and Stuart Freedman in 1972. They appeared to support the quantum-mechanical predictions, but those loath to give up locality seized upon various experimental loopholes. One required improving detector efficiencies and another demanded that Alice and Bob have the settings of their apparatuses change so rapidly that information about how they are set could not be sent from one to the other even using signals that travel at the speed of light. Via the subsequent experimental efforts of Aspect and Zeilinger and others, these loopholes have been successively closed, and there is no serious doubt that the quantum-mechanical predictions are accurate.

Further, it has been shown that the quantum-mechanical states that allow for violations of Bells inequality are exactly the entangled states, so proving the physical reality of non-locality suggests that entanglement is an exploitable physical resource in a quantum system. This realization inspired people working in quantum computation and quantum communication and quantum cryptography to investigate how entangled states might be used for practical purposes. And that set off the second quantum revolution.

___

What Bells theoretical work and the subsequent experimental work of Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger proved was non-locality. Ultimately, they proved Einstein wrong in his suspicions against spooky action-at-a-distance.

___

Unfortunately, much of this history has been garbled in the public discussion of Bells work and its experimental tests. The Noble prize committee itself gets it wrong in its press release,

"John Clauser developed John Bells ideas, leading to a practical experiment. When he took the measurements, they supported quantum mechanics by clearly violating a Bell inequality. This means that quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by a theory that uses hidden variables."

But that statement is flatly false. Indeed, it was a theory that uses hidden variablesBohmian mechanicsthat inspired Bell to find his inequalities, and that theory makes the correct prediction that the inequalities will be violated. The most well-known and highly developed hidden variables theory is that of Bohm, and Bell not only did not refute it, he was one of its most vocal proponents. In On the Impossible Pilot WaveBells wonderful paper expositing the theoryhe writes

Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in textbooks? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?

If one rightly wonders how such an encomium for a hidden variables theory could be written by the man who disproved hidden variables, the simple answer is that it wasnt. What Bells theoretical work and the subsequent experimental work of Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger proved was non-locality, not no-hidden-variables. Ultimately, they proved Einstein wrong in his suspicions against spooky action-at-a-distance. And that, surely, deserves the highest honors one can bestow.

SUGGESTED READINGThe many meanings of Schrdinger's catBy IAI Editorial

The long gap between Bells proofand its experimental testsand the recognition of the accomplishment is regrettable. We should all be very pleased that that recognition has finally arrived. But the delay was in large part due to persistent misunderstandings and even dismissal of Bells work by people who had not put in the effort needed to understand it. May the presentation of the Nobel prize mark the end of these mischaracterizations, so the sweet may triumph over the bitter.

The rest is here:

Einstein, God, and Spooky Action at-a-Distance | Tim Maudlin - IAI

FRONT PAGE

EC asks parties to explain how they plan to finance poll promises, draws Opp fire

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination:Indian Polity and Governance-Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues, etc.

Mains Examination:General Studies II: Salient features of the Representation of Peoples Act.

Key Points to Ponder:

Whats the ongoing story- Amid a raging debate on the financial implication of freebies promised by political parties during elections or the Revdi culture referred to by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the Election Commission of India Tuesday wrote to parties proposing that they spell out ways and means of raising additional resources to finance the promises, and the impact it would have on the fiscal sustainability of the state or the Central government.

For Your Information-Floating a consultation paper, the EC, in its letter to all recognised national and state parties, has prescribed a standardised disclosure proforma for them to declare quantification of the physical coverage of the schemes promised, financial implications of the promise and availability of the financial resources. The EC has asked the parties to furnish their views by October 19.

The ECs move drew a sharp reaction from the Opposition-Is this move by Election Commission is overreach?

What is Model Code of Conduct?

What is Freebies?

Is there any definition of the term freebies given in the existing legal/policy framework?

What is wrong if political parties are promising freebies?

Promises made by the political parties, often driven by short-term electoral calculations-Agree or disagree?

Do You Know The parties will have to detail how they propose to raise the additional resources to finance the scheme or schemes if voted to power like whether they plan an increase in tax and non-tax revenues, rationalise expenditure, go for additional borrowings or do it in any other manner.

How freebies Impact Union and State budgets?

Why the word Freebie is almost sounds pejorative especially in political and policy circle?

The political dialogue built around freebies is fraught with danger. What danger is associated with Freebies scheme?

How Budget is managed for Freebies schemes and Programmes?

Election Commission of India and Article 324 of the Constitution-Know in detail

The independent and impartial functioning of the Election Commission-How it is ensured?

Election Commission of India- Powers and Functions

Chief Election Commissioner and the two other Election Commissioners have equal powers-True or False?

In case of difference of opinion amongst the Chief election commissioner and/or two other election commissioners, the matter is decided by the Supreme Court of India-Right or Wrong?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

As constitutional office, may not be apt to be part of SC panel on poll freebies: EC

Election monitor does well to refrain from stepping into debate on freebies. That

Over-reach, will stay out, Election Commission told Supreme Court before U-turn

Split on method to name new SC judges, CJI sends 2nd note to Collegium

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination:Indian Polity and Governance

Main Examination:General Studies-II: Structure, organization and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary

Key Points to Ponder:

Whats the ongoing story- With a little over a month left for his retirement and two of the five-member Supreme Court Collegium opposed to a proposal to recommend four new judges, including a Supreme Court lawyer, to the top court through a written note instead of a formal meeting, Chief Justice of India U U Lalit is learnt to have written to them again, seeking reconsideration of their stand.

For Your Information-As per the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP), the document governing the process of appointment of judges and appointment of the CJI, the Law Minister asks the outgoing Chief Justice of India to recommend the next CJI. The MoP states that the CJI should be the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court considered fit to hold the office. Although the MoP says that the CJIs views must be sought at the appropriate time and does not specify a timeline for the process, it normally takes place a month before the retirement of the incumbent CJI.

Do You Know-Articles 124 to 147 in Part V of the Constitution deal with the organisation, independence jurisdiction, powers, procedures and so on of the Supreme Court. The Parliament is also authorised to regulate them.

What is the sanctioned strength of Supreme Court Judges in India?

Who appoints the Chief Justice of India?

How is the seniority of judges in the Supreme Court decided?

What does the Collegium consider while making the recommendation?

National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act 2014-Know the key highlights

Supreme Court on NJAC Act 2014 (99th Constitutional Amendment Act)-know in detail

First Judges Case (1982), Second Judges Case (1993) and Third Judges Case (1998)-Know in detail

What was the Supreme courts ruling in the Second Judges case (1993), with respect to the appointment of a judge?

Third Judges case (1998) and Supreme Courts ruling in case of the appointment-What was the Supreme Courts ruling?

The National Judicial Appointments Commission Act of 2014 and the Collegium System-Compare and Contrast

What are the qualifications required for a person to be appointed as the Chief Justice of India?

A person appointed as a Chief Justice of Supreme Court, before entering upon his office, has to make and subscribe an oath or affirmation before whom?

The Constitution has made certain provisions to safeguard and ensure the independent and impartial functioning of a Judges-Know in detail

Jurisdiction And Powers Of Chief Justice of India-Know in detail

Executive Vs Judiciary for appointment of judges in higher judiciary-Know in detail

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

How is seniority decided in the SC?

Supreme Court strikes down NJAC, revives collegium system

Debate over the collegium system: How are SC and HC judges appointed?

Reservation for Paharis too in J&K, says Shah

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development-Sustainable Development, Poverty, Inclusion, Demographics, Social Sector Initiatives, etc.

Mains Examination:General Studies II: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Key Points to Ponder:

Whats the ongoing story Ahead of the first-ever visit of Union Home Minister Amit Shah to border Rajouri district on Tuesday, the Pir Panjal region of Jammu and Kashmir is seeing growing tension between the Gujjar and Pahari communities over expected plans to grant Scheduled Tribe status to the latter.

Gujjar and Bakarwal Communities-Know in detail

Who are Paharis in Jammu & Kashmir?

Do You Know-The Gujjars and Bakerwals, who follow Islam, constitute 40% of the population in the border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, with the rest living in these areas identifying themselves as Paharis. With a population of nearly 15 lakh as per the 2011 Census, the Gujjars and Bakerwals form the third largest ethnic group in J&K after Kashmiris and Dogras. Since April 1991, they have enjoyed benefits of 10% reservation for STs in government jobs and admissions to educational institutions.

What is the issue between Paharis and Gujjars?

How are Scheduled Tribes declared?

The Gujjars contend that the majority of Pahari speakers are upper class Muslims such as Syeds, Qazi, Per, Beg, Raja, Malik, Mirza, Khan, upper caste Sikhs, Kashmiris, Hindus, and Christians such as Barahmins, Rajputs, and Mahajans who do not experience caste discrimination or social stigma like the Gujjars, Bakerwals, and other tribes of Jammu and Kashmir-Comment

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

New contours as J&K map redrawn: Paharis press for ST status, NC loses key leader

THE CITY

You can adopt an animal at Delhi Zoo, but prices vary

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: General issues on Environmental ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate Change that do not require subject specialization.

Mains Examination:General Studies III: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Key Points to Ponder:

Whats the ongoing story- The National Zoological Park (Delhi Zoo) has launched an animal adoption scheme allowing people to sign up to pay for the care of animals at the facility. Zoo director Dharam Deo Rai said that the scheme is being introduced for the first time at the zoo and is meant to encourage the participation of people in wildlife conservation.

What is animal adoption scheme?

How animal adoption scheme will work?

Animal adoption scheme is first of its kind in India-Agree or disagree?

Animal adoption scheme-Know its features and highlights

Human-animal conflict is the biggest challenge in India and Animal adoption scheme will be icebreaker-discuss

Animal adoption scheme can be implemented in sanctuary or in national parks?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

Animal Adoption Scheme: You can now adopt your favorite animals at Delhi Zoo Check how the scheme works and rate list

EXPLAINED

What led to the Credit Suisse crisis; and the road ahead

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination:General Studies III: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.

Key Points to Ponder:

Whats the ongoing story- Over the past few days, the share price of Credit Suisse, one of the oldest and historically one of the most influential banks in the world, has hit an all-time low. Since the beginning of 2022, Credit Suisses share price has fallen close to 60 per cent.

Credit Suisse-Know in detail

What has triggered the concern around Credit Suisse?

How did it impact Credit Suisse?

What is a credit default swaps?

How did credit default swaps work?

Why rise in the spread of Credit Default Swaps is worrisome?

What has Credit Suisse said?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

What Is a Credit Default Swap (CDS)?

Continue reading here:

UPSC Key-October 5, 2022: Why you should read 'Animal Adoption Scheme' or 'Credit Suisse' or 'Quantum Theory' for UPSC CSE - The Indian Express

The idea of using the laws of quantum mechanics for computation was proposed in 1982 by Richard Feynman. But Deutschwho is at the University of Oxford, UKis often credited with establishing the conceptual foundations of the discipline. Computer bits that obey quantum principles, such as superposition and entanglement, can carry out some calculations much faster and more efficiently than ones that obey classical rules. In 1985 Deutsch postulated that a device made from such quantum bits (qubits) could be made universal, meaning it could simulate any quantum system. Deutsch framed his proposal in the context of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (of which he is an advocate), likening the process of one quantum computation to that of many parallel computations occurring simultaneously in entangled worlds.

To motivate further work in quantum computing, researchers at the time needed problems that a quantum computer could uniquely solve. I remember conversations in the early 1990s in which people would argue about whether quantum computers would ever be able to do anything really useful, says quantum physicist William Wootters of Williams College, Massachusetts, who has worked with Bennett and Brassard on quantum cryptography problems. Then suddenly Peter Shor devised a quantum algorithm that could indeed do something eminently useful.

In 1995 Shor, who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed an algorithm that could factorize large integersdecompose them into products of primesmuch more efficiently than any known classical algorithm. In classical computation, the time that it takes to factorize a large number increases exponentially as the number gets larger, which is why factorizing large numbers provides the basis for todays methods for online data encryption. Shors algorithm showed that for a quantum computer, the time needed increases less rapidly, making factorizing large numbers potentially more feasible. This theoretical demonstration immediately injected energy into the field, Wootters says. Shor has also made important contributions to the theory of quantum error correction, which is more challenging in quantum than in classical computation (see Focus: LandmarksCorrecting Quantum Computer Errors).

Without Deutsch and Shor we would not have the field of quantum computation as we know it today, says quantum theorist Artur Ekert of the University of Oxford, who considers Deutsch his mentor. David defined the field, and Peter took it to an entirely different level by discovering the real power of quantum computation and by showing that it actually can be done.

Data encryption is the topic cited for the award of Bennett (IBMs Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York) and Brassard (University of Montreal, Canada). In 1984 the pair described a protocol in which information could be encoded in qubits and sent between two parties in such a way that the information could not be read by an eavesdropper without that intervention being detected. Like quantum computing, this quantum cryptographic scheme relies on entangling qubits, meaning that their properties are interdependent, no matter how far apart they are separated. This BB84 protocol and similar quantum encryption schemes have now been used for secure transmission of data along optical networks and even via satellite over thousands of kilometers (see Focus: Intercontinental, Quantum-Encrypted Messaging and Video).

In 1993 Bennett and Brassard also showed how entanglement may be harnessed for quantum teleportation, whereby the state of one qubit is broadcast to another distant one while the original state is destroyed (see Focus: LandmarksTeleportation is not Science Fiction). This process too has applications in quantum information processing.

I am really gratified by this award because it recognizes the field of quantum information and computation, Shor says. Deutsch echoes the sentiment: Im glad that [quantum information] is now officially regarded as fundamental physics rather than as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, or engineering.

Deutsch, Shor, Bennett, and Brassard deserve recognition for their work, and Im delighted that theyre getting it, Wootters says. He notes that their research not only inspired the development of quantum technologies, but also influenced new research in quantum foundations. Quantum information theory views quantum theory through a novel lens and opens up a new perspective from which to address foundational questions.

Link:

Physics - Breakthrough Prize for the Physics of Quantum Informationand of Cells - Physics