The University of Adelaide: Large Hadron Collider regularly makes magic

A brotherly research duo has discovered that when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produces top quarks – the heaviest known fundamental particles – it regularly creates a property known as magic.

This finding, published in Physical Review D , has implications for the progression of quantum computing, with magic being a measure that describes how difficult a quantum system is for a non-quantum computer to calculate.

“The higher the magic, the more we need quantum computers to describe the behaviour,” explains Professor Martin White, from the University of Adelaide’s School of Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences, who co-led the study with his twin brother, Professor Chris White, a physicist from Queen Mary University of London.

“Studying the magic properties of quantum systems generates significant insights into the development and potential uses of quantum computers.”

The LHC is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, consisting of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures through which two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide.

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