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# Maximizing Information on the Environment by Dynamically Controlled Qubit Probes

## Details

**Authors** Zwick et al.

**Year** 2016

**Publisher** Physical Review Applied

**Discipline** Mathematics

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.5.014007) 
10.1103/PhysRevApplied.5.014007

## In authors' words

### Abstract

From computers to medicine, miniaturization approaches the atomic scale, where device operation can be dominated by quantum effects that are strongly coupled to the local environment. These influences may be seen not as a nuisance, but rather a nearly untapped source of information about physical or biochemical processes playing out nearby. How can one extract maximum information from such fluctuations with an atomic probe, under typical experimental constraints? The authors use quantum estimation theory to outline a general strategy for dynamical measurement of a broad class of environmental processes.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To use quantum bits to measure how an atom sees and reacts to it's environment.

### What they found (results)

Atoms sense their environments.

## Commentary

### In short

The Perspective pattern exists in nature, through scale, as atoms can (and do) sense their enivronments

### In more detail

Renowned physicist Freeman Dyson states, “... mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call ‘chance’ when they are made by electrons.” It is difficult to be sure if Dyson is speaking metaphorically or empirically. However, Zwick’s et al. answers the question empirically with their research on the ability of a probe (qubit) to sense unknown measures of a molecular, atomic or quantum environment. Their research makes it clear that atoms have a sensory perspectival experience of their environment. Qubits (quantum bits) “are sensitive probes of the structure and properties of highly complex molecular, atomic, or solid-state quantum systems” Zwick explains. In their research they were particularly interested in using the a qubits unique perspective to extract information about its environment by monitoring the qubit’s decoherence process, “atoms are actually sensing through interactions (similarly as we do) their environment, and change their behaviour accordingly”.Their research demonstrates that qubits have a perspective on their molecular and atomic environments which can be used for important gains by, “[extracting] information from the behaviour of atoms acting as sensors, to try to reconstruct indirectly the information from their environment. In particular, we are exploiting this property to develop novel diagnostic tools using magnetic resonance imaging, to be able to see deep inside biological tissues and their structure in non-invasive ways”. Therefore, molecules, atoms, and quarks have a frame of reference. The Perspective pattern is fundamental not just to the mind, but also in nature, in the most fundamental elements of the universe itself.

**Patterns it shows** P

**How to cite this** Zwick et al. (2016). Maximizing Information on the Environment by Dynamically Controlled Qubit Probes. Physical Review Applied.