This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Voltage fluctuations, light fluctuations, temperature fluctuations—any fluctuations are troublesome and thus undesirable. They don't just cause discomfort; in engineering and medical applications, they affect the accuracy of measurements or introduce errors in controls.
Even at the minute level of quantum phenomena, fluctuations are considered undesirable. But what if some fluctuations can be made useful? A theoretical study from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) shows that structured quantum fluctuations in light can be used to sense and generate useful quantum optical signals.
Kartik Prabhu and professor Gopal Dixit of IIT Bombay's Physics Department have proposed a new way to detect quantum fluctuations in light using the quantum material graphene as a sensor. Their study, published in Physical Review B, shows that when specially prepared quantum light is shone on graphene, its interaction with graphene can reveal information about the quantum nature of the incident light. It also shows that by carefully engineering the quantum fluctuations in the incident light, we can generate tailored high-frequency emission.
"Our study brings together, for the first time, quantum light, a quantum material and high-harmonic generation in the extreme ultraviolet frequency range," says Dixit. High-harmonic generation is an emerging technique for imaging electron dynamics and makes it possible to track complex chemical reactions in real time. The method involves shining short, intense laser pulses on noble gases or specific solids to obtain a very short pulse of attosecond duration (a billionth of a billionth of a second) with a frequency that is an exact integer multiple of the original laser's frequency.
In classical physics, light is treated as a wave and described by its intensity (amplitude) and the initial shift of the wave's peaks (phase). As we scale down to minute levels in time, space and intensity, we enter the realm of quantum physics. Here, light is described in terms of intensity and phase values, with a range of uncertainty for both.
Even in a complete vacuum or total darkness, there are temporary random changes in the amount of energy at a point. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that two quantities with specific mathematical relationships cannot be known with absolute precision. For example, we can precisely determine either a particle's position or its momentum, but not both at the same time.
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