Engineers and physicists from the University of Queensland and the University of Sussex are looking into next-generation sensors that can be used in a diverse number of fields, including mineral exploration and climate change.
Theoretical physicist Dr Stuart Szigeti, from the University of Queensland's School of Mathematics and Physics, says these next-generation precision sensors would exploit the unusual effects of quantum mechanics.
The basis of this sensor technology is a device called an atom interferometer, which allows atoms to be recycled and reused.
"This technique will vastly improve the performance of these devices, leading to improved sensing technology," said Dr Szigeti.
"An atom interferometer uses the quantum ‘wave-like’ nature of atoms in order to make very precise measurements of accelerations, rotations, and gravitational fields."
Dr Szigeti, who works within one of five nodes of the Australian Research Council Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, said the devices would have applications on land and sea.
These quantum-based sensors, he says, could be used in mineral exploration, allowing easier location of mineral reserves underground, and in hydrology, where users would be able to track the movement of water across the planet in order to monitor the effects of climate change.
With the ability to measure accelerations, rotations and gravitational fields, these sensors would also have obvious applications in navitgation.
However, the road to these next-generation sensors is not smooth. According to Dr Simon Haine from the University of Sussex, the development of precise atom interferometers had been hampered by an effect known as quantum noise, which was uncertainty in a quantum system signal.
Quantum noise can be mitigated by the use of another quantum mechanic property, entanglement.
"Proof-of-principle experiments have recently shown how to generate entanglement within atom interferometers, and have used this to alleviate the effects of quantum noise," he explained.
"However, this comes at a cost, as in the process of creating entanglement, most of the atoms are wasted, which hinders the performance of these devices."
The researchers are finding ways to harvest and recycle these wasted atoms, in order to improve the performance of the devices, and also improve their sensitivity.
[Image courtesy: UCL Mathematical and Physical Sciences https://www.flickr.com/photos/uclmaps/]
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