Causation is central to our experience of reality: a falling glass, for example. forces He needs to crash, so there’s no way he could crash before being let in. But in the quantum world these rules do not always apply, and now scientists have shown how this wonder can be used to charge a quantum battery.

It can be said that quantum batteries are, in a sense, fed by paradoxes. On paper, they work by storing energy in quantum states of atoms and molecules, but of course as soon as the word “quantum” enters conversation you know something strange is about to happen. In this case, new research has found that quantum batteries may work by disrupting the cause-effect relationships we know.

“Current batteries for low-power devices such as smartphones or sensors often use chemicals such as lithium to store charge, while quantum batteries use microscopic particles such as strings of atoms,” said study author Yuanbo Chen. said. “While chemical batteries are subject to the laws of classical physics, microscopic particles are inherently quantum, so we have the opportunity to discover ways to use them that distort, or even distort, our intuitive understanding of what happens at small scales. We are particularly interested in how quantum particles can work to disrupt one of our most fundamental experiences: the experience of time.” I am interested.”

In classical physics (the kind we experience in the large-scale world) causality is clearly linear. Going back to the previous analogy, dropping the glass (Event A) causes the glass to break (Event B), but you cannot change the relationship between the two events. The glass did not fall for Broken But in the spooky world of quantum physics, this limitation is not necessary. And turning this paradox into a quantum battery could help make them more efficient.

In a new study, scientists at the University of Tokyo conducted a laboratory experiment using lasers, lenses, and mirrors that acted as a large-scale quantum battery. Charging these batteries usually requires multiple charging stages working in tandem, but here the team took advantage of a quantum effect called indeterminate causal order (ICO). Essentially, when they put the system into quantum superposition, the causal order can exist in both directions simultaneously, allowing multiple charging stages to work together rather than sequentially.

“With ICO, we showed that the way a quantum particle battery is charged can have a significant impact on its performance,” Chen said. “We have seen huge benefits in both the energy stored in the system and thermal efficiency. “And somewhat paradoxically, we found a surprising interaction effect that is exactly the opposite of what you would expect: A lower-power charger can deliver higher energy with higher efficiency than a relatively higher-power charger using the same device.”

This may be hard for most people to understand, but quantum batteries could one day become a reality. Currently, these exist only as laboratory experiments, but scientists are slowly testing various aspects of them, with the ultimate goal of figuring out how to combine the various parts into a working whole.