Researchers Observe First Real-Time Quantum Jump in Sound

Stanford researchers directly observed individual phonons, or quantum units of sound, making discrete energy jumps in a mechanical resonator in real time. The team paired a long-lived microscopic resonator with a superconducting qubit that repeatedly measured whether its vibrational energy was present or had dropped from one quantum level to another. The result could support sound-based quantum computing error correction and highly sensitive sensing applications, including efforts to identify proteins within cells. Image: This mechanical resonator, depicted in an illustration (left) and in an image taken by a scanning electron microscope (right),…