Artificial intelligence better than physicists at designing quantum science experiments | Science - ABC News

Belinda Smith, online science reporter in the ABC RN science unit explains, The quantum world defies logic: wrap your brain around instantaneous messaging between distant particles, or cats that are alive and dead at the same time.

Laser light exerts a tiny force, and can help corral supercold atoms into a cloud.
Photo: Supplied, Edwards/JQI

Perhaps physicists should leave human intuition at the laboratory door when designing quantum experiments too.

An Australian crew enlisted the help of a neural network — a type of artificial intelligence — to optimise the way they capture super-cold atoms.

Usually, physicists smoothly tune lasers and magnetic fields to gradually coax atoms into a cloud, according to study co-author Ben Buchler from the Australian National University...

This more vigorous approach, published in Nature Communications, trapped twice as many atoms in half the time when compared to traditional methods devised by humans.

Why trap cold atoms?
In the past few decades, cold clouds of atoms have formed the foundations for advances in precision measurement, optical atomic clocks and quantum processing.

And in many cases, the colder the cloud, the better. That's because a warm atom is a jiggly atom, and this poses a problem for physicists.

When atoms interact with one another, they create noise in the system. 
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Source: ABC News