For the first time, a research team from the University of Glasgow, one of the largest universities in Scotland, has been able to exploit one of the strange quantum properties of light photons to build more detailed and accurate images compared to the currently available hologram images, which opens the door to a wide range of Applications.

What is a hologram?

To understand the significance of this innovation, let's start with what the laser means;

In the case of an ordinary lamp, the photons of light are scattered in every direction, and each of them is emitted in a different phase from the other, but in the case of the laser, the photons of light are emitted together in one direction and in one phase.

It is similar - for the purpose of rounding - to let a group of people set off in a large room randomly, some of them preceding the other, and each goes in a different direction, and then gathering them in a military queue in which everyone moves together in one direction along each other, and if these people are Photons of light, the laser is the state of queue.

In ordinary hologram theory, if we want, for example, to make an image of an apple, a laser beam is fired from a special source, and then it is intercepted by a mirror that divides it into two rays, the first is called the body ray, and the second is called the reference beam.

There is a better chance of using quantum holography for wide applications (Dieter Young - Wikipedia)

The ray of the object collides with the apple, but after this collision, the photons of light lose their alignment based on the thickness of the different regions of the surface of the apple, preceding or delaying each other, and here it is said that the laser beam preserved the features of the apple, exactly as sand or silt retains the image of a mold placed on it.

After that, the ray of the object goes to the film that it will fall on to print the image, but in the meantime the other ray, the reference ray, was reflected on a nearby mirror and also returned to the film itself, here the two beams overlap together, and from their overlap, the 3D image is produced.

A colossal leap

According to the study, which was published by this team in the journal Nature Physics, and the university announced it in an official statement on February 4, that in the case of quantum holography, researchers rely on a property of subatomic bodies called quantum entanglement. ), Which means that there is some kind of relationship or interconnection between two particles, even if they are at a distance of billions of kilometers, and if this is affected, it is affected in the same way.

In their experiments, the researchers fired two pairs of photons: the first would play the role of an object ray, and it would fall on the object we want to photograph, and be a component of the human cell, and the second would play the role of a reference beam, and it would fall onto a reflecting device.

The researchers released two pairs of photons: the first plays the role of the body ray, and the second plays the role of the reference beam (University of Glasgow)

In this case, the two pairs of photons do not need to meet again, because quantum entanglement actually enables each of them to obtain the information of the other, and thus the interference occurs instantaneously, this gives the image better dynamic stability, and it resists noise resulting from interference in the case of normal holograms. .

On the other hand, quantum entanglement is a characteristic that is difficult to control in nature, and thus it has the advantage of being less sensitive to deviations that can be caused by the surrounding external conditions.

These advantages enable scientists to produce biological images of massive difference with better quality compared to those obtained from current microscopy techniques, so there is a better chance to use quantum holography to reveal biological mechanisms within cells that were not previously observed.