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Binary_Bark
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Stars, quasars, and other celestial objects generate photons in a random way, and now scientists have taken advantage of this randomness to generate random numbers at rates of more than one million numbers per second. Generating random numbers at very high rates has a variety of applications, such as in cryptography and computer simulations.
But the researchers in the new study are also interested in using these cosmic random number generators for another purpose: to test the foundations of physics by progressively addressing another loophole in the Bell tests. While Bell tests show that quantum particles are correlated in ways that cannot be explained by classical physics, the results may not be reliable if parts of these tests manage to take advantage of any kind of loophole.
The researchers, led by Jian-Wei Pan, at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, have published a paper on using cosmic sources to generate random numbers in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
"We presented an experimental realization of cosmic random number generators (RNGs) and a realistic design of an event-ready Bell test experiment with these RNGs to address the freedom-of-choice loophole while closing the locality and efficiency loopholes simultaneously," coauthor Jingyun Fan told Phys.org. "It will be of high interest to implement the proposed experiment in the near future."
In their work, the researchers used an optical telescope located at the Astronomy Observatory in Xinglong, China, to collect light from a variety of very bright and distant cosmic radiation sources. Some of these objects are more than a trillion times brighter than our Sun and located hundreds of millions of light-years away.
Since the time interval between photon emission events is random, the photons are detected by the telescope at random time intervals. The device has a time resolution of 25 picoseconds (a picosecond is one trillionth of a second). On average, a photon is detected about once every 100 nanoseconds, corresponding to more than a million photons detected per second. This rate is competitive with today's current best random number generators, which use lasers as the photon source.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-stars-random-foundations-physics.html#jCp
But the researchers in the new study are also interested in using these cosmic random number generators for another purpose: to test the foundations of physics by progressively addressing another loophole in the Bell tests. While Bell tests show that quantum particles are correlated in ways that cannot be explained by classical physics, the results may not be reliable if parts of these tests manage to take advantage of any kind of loophole.
The researchers, led by Jian-Wei Pan, at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, have published a paper on using cosmic sources to generate random numbers in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
"We presented an experimental realization of cosmic random number generators (RNGs) and a realistic design of an event-ready Bell test experiment with these RNGs to address the freedom-of-choice loophole while closing the locality and efficiency loopholes simultaneously," coauthor Jingyun Fan told Phys.org. "It will be of high interest to implement the proposed experiment in the near future."
In their work, the researchers used an optical telescope located at the Astronomy Observatory in Xinglong, China, to collect light from a variety of very bright and distant cosmic radiation sources. Some of these objects are more than a trillion times brighter than our Sun and located hundreds of millions of light-years away.
Since the time interval between photon emission events is random, the photons are detected by the telescope at random time intervals. The device has a time resolution of 25 picoseconds (a picosecond is one trillionth of a second). On average, a photon is detected about once every 100 nanoseconds, corresponding to more than a million photons detected per second. This rate is competitive with today's current best random number generators, which use lasers as the photon source.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-stars-random-foundations-physics.html#jCp