On the walls of Jeff Tollaksen's office, you can find solutions to some of the toughest questions about the universe among the scrawled, overlapping equations plastered all over the white boards taking up half his workspace.
Tollaksen loves his work. His face lights up when he talks about it. He spends his days thinking up impossible things, proving them and rubbing elbows with brilliant minds and Nobel Prize winners. Those are his colleagues. Tollaksen is co-director of the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University. The other director, Yakir Aharonov, is another major name in physics.
Quantum studies deals with the world of science, theory and engineering in relation to quantum measurements – the smallest measurable amount of most forms of energy and matter. Some of the questions Tollaksen and others at the institute are studying involve dark matter, non-locality, the nature of particles and the directions in which time occurs. They are trying to explain the ways the universe functions.
Some of their developments, being tested at the team's Advanced Physics Lab in Maryland, may change the way our lives are powered.
One of the most pressing questions in physics involves dark matter. Nobel Prize winner in physics Francois Englert, a Chapman visiting professor and member of the Institute for Quantum Studies, mentioned it during his news conference after learning of his win.
Theories that try to explain it have yet to come to fruition.
“This is one of the big philosophical physics questions,” Tollaksen said. “What is it, etc.? We know that it comprises 85 percent of the matter in the universe. We know that it does not interact with things that we can see very well, in contrast to light, which interacts very well. Dark matter does interact through gravity, and that is how it is measured. I think almost every day there is another new theory attempting to explain it. Various people at the institute work on it. And the detectors we work on in our Advanced Physics Lab may further help to detect it.”
Trying to come up with simple ways to explain dark matter is tough. There are few analogies because it is such an elusive concept.
Work involving quantum studies may be on the way to solving very practical problems of daily life.
One area that researchers at the Maryland lab have been working on is creating a high-temperature superconductor. Currently, superconductors must be kept at extremely cold temperatures to function. “High temperature” in this case means warmer than –405.67 degrees Fahrenheit.
A superconductor is a compound, alloy or element that, at extremely low temperatures, can conduct energy currents without any resistance or loss. They are magnetic, and when at these cold temperatures, a superconductor can be controlled in levitation. On a small, tabletop level, it has already been done.
A scientific breakthrough like this could revolutionize transportation. If a room-temperature superconductor magnet could be achieved, a whole train could be levitated and then powered using force as minimal as the push of a finger.
What this means is that with the right superconductor compounds, there would also be no loss of energy throughout a grid or system. By eliminating loss in the energy transit, there would be less energy expended in powering homes, which would lead to a greener planet, institute researcher Armen Gulian said.
The energy needed to supply hospitals would be stabilized, and cool-magnetic technology-based machines such as MRIs and diagnostic scans would be easier to maintain, effectively costing less money.
Research into superconductors started off as a big question and resulted in equations and mathematics that allowed for testing and engineering. But Tollaksen said the team based at Chapman is close to announcing a huge breakthrough on superconductor technology.
“I think we may have done it,” said Tollaksen, grinning. “I can't tell you all of the details.”
‘SACRED' SCIENCE CHALLENGED
Another field of research is non-locality, which is the notion that an impact on particles in one place will have effects on particles elsewhere with no perceivable connecting agent. The traditional idea that for a reaction to happen there must be a direct action could become invalid.
“The notion that nature is ‘local' has been one of the sacred principles of science,” Tollaksen said. “After all, we know that we can perform precise physics experiments in shielded laboratories and we need not worry about what is happening outside the lab. The idea seems unassailable. Well, it looks like this idea is breaking down in some very subtle, yet very significant ways.”
Other projects involve quantum computers and computational theory. With this line of research may come the ability to create cryptology and code-breaking algorithms based on principles in physics – information that is processed in quantum states instead of the present yes-and-no digital commands.
“It would be security based on the laws of physics,” Tollaksen said
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE
The passage of time has proved to yield answers in quantum physics – it took half a century for Englert's initial paper to result in the discovery of the Higgs boson. Trying to know the nature of the universe or time was deemed too provocative in early quantum studies.
Now, such issues are the focus of scientists the world over. Even how time flows is getting a closer look.
Time, at least in the experience of some particles in light, has been shown to move forward – as well as backward. The work in this area may not change the order of your day as you know and experience it, but it does change the nature of how particles are presumed to experience their life spans.
“The human experience of the passage of time is indeed very fundamental. Yet, in the block universe of Einstein's general theory of relativity, time does not pass or flow, it simply is,” Tollaksen said. “Related to this is the age-old mystery of free will. We believe that we have the ability to alter our future by means of our actions in the present through our own free will. New physics affecting these big questions are on the horizon.”
The institute is more than a collection of geniuses postulating and thinking about the biggest and smallest things that make up the universe. On Chapman's campus, it serves as a practical center for physics students. These students study under professors at Chapman, many of whom are part of the institute. In turn, the students have access to and are utilized as research assistants for larger projects.
In one case, a student went to work on the largest project ever. Luz Jimenez Vela went to work in Europe this past summer to conduct data analysis on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The underground, nearly 17-mile-long circular collider is the particle accelerator where the famous Higgs boson “God particle” was detected. It is the largest experiment and testing facility in the world.
In circular fashion, around 50 years ago, the paper first postulating concepts that led to the development of CERN and the hunt for a “God particle” was written by Institute member Englert.
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