\u201cWhat this study shows will allow us to move forward with developing new quantum technologies with sound,\u201d said\u00a0Safavi-Naeini<\/a>, associate professor of applied physics in the Stanford\u00a0School of Humanities and Sciences<\/a>. \u201cWe have seen that vibrating objects can exhibit quantum behavior, which is the prerequisite for many of the operations needed by quantum computing and sensing.\u201d<\/p>\n While a quantum unit of light\u2014its smallest possible discrete piece\u2014is a singular photon, a quantum unit of sound, or \u201cphonon,\u201d represents the coordinated movement of a large group of atoms.<\/p>\n To the human senses, vibrating motion from sound, like that seen in a struck bell, appears to decline gradually rather than make an abrupt jump to stillness. At the quantum level, however, a resonator\u2019s vibrational energy changes in discrete steps, or jumps, similar to the quantum behavior of ions and photons. Earlier experiments had found evidence of these jumps, but this study is the first to demonstrate individual phonons making quantum jumps in real time.<\/p>\n Size and timing<\/p>\n The mechanical resonator was fabricated using chipmaking techniques. It is so small that many resonators could be packed onto a chip to perform complex functions.<\/p>\n The length of time the resonator can \u201cring\u201d is what made this breakthrough possible. Working sort of like a microscopic tuning fork, the resonator can vibrate for two milliseconds. For comparison, if the same capability were found in a regular-sized tuning fork, it would ring for several hours.<\/p>\n The long resonation or \u201cringdown time\u201d of the resonator allowed for hundreds of readings to be taken to determine the moment the vibration was no longer present and the sound jumped\u2014when it moved from an energy state of 1 to 0.<\/p>\n Sound control Takuma Makihara and Erik Szakiel, the co-first authors on the study, developed a way to pair the microscopic mechanical resonator with a superconducting qubit, an electrical circuit that can store quantum information and serve as a detector<\/p>\n \u201cWe had to continually develop new processes to make this extremely long-lived, vibrating object and then integrate it with the qubit, which is our little electrical detector\u2014without ruining either subsystem,\u201d said Makihara, a recent Stanford doctoral graduate.<\/p>\n The qubit can read out what is happening in the mechanical resonator, essentially checking over and over during the two milliseconds of vibration if the phonon inside is at an energy level of 1 or at 0. This is how the researchers can record the moment a quantum jump occurs.<\/p>\n Developing a sound platform It could help solve the error correction problem in quantum computing, for instance. While quantum computing holds great potential for handling some complex calculations beyond the capacity of traditional computers, fragile quantum states can cause errors before a calculation is finished. In many quantum computing architectures, a quantum jump represents an error, but identifying when those occur has been difficult. So the ability to detect quantum jumps in sound marks an important step toward error correction. \u00a0<\/p>\n Because of its small size and high sensitivity, the combination of mechanical resonator and qubit could also be used for extremely precise sensing. For example, Safavi-Naeini\u2019s team, in collaboration with physicist Michael Roukes\u2019 team at Caltech, is already pursuing use of this platform to detect and identify proteins within cells.<\/p>\n Everyday technologies could benefit as well. Sound is integral to smartphones and many other devices, and this advance could be a step toward the next generation of these items, said Szakiel, a current doctoral student in Safavi-Naeini\u2019s lab.<\/p>\n \u201cThis shows we can have incredibly fine-tuned control of sound, which might mean that devices that use sound as a fundamental technology can get much better,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Safavi-Naeini is also a member of Stanford Q-FARM and Bio-X.<\/p>\n Additional Stanford co-authors include David Schuster, the Joan Reinhart Professor and professor of applied physics in H&S; Shannon Harvey, a scientist with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Mihir Pendharkar, physical research scientist at the Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory; former applied physics doctoral scholar Rachel Gruenke-Freudenstein; and Oliver Hitchcock, Matthew Maksymowych, and Kaveh Pezeshki, doctoral scholars in applied physics.<\/p>\n This research received support from Amazon Web Services Inc., the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the U.S. Department of Defense.<\/p>\n Safavi-Naeini and Schuster are both Amazon Scholars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Insider Brief Stanford researchers directly observed individual phonons, or quantum units of sound, making discrete energy jumps in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[61,60,248,82],"class_list":["post-628508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Introducing](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789732570_569_Option-1-1-1.png\")
<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n
To conduct this experiment, the researchers had to overcome an ongoing challenge in quantum engineering: how to get a signal out of a quantum system without disturbing its fragile state.<\/p>\n
This study represents a foundational first step, but the ability to detect quantum jumps of sound could lead to a number of advances.<\/p>\n