Physicists Utilize the Holographic Correspondence Conjecture to Describe Quantum Teleportation of Qubits Via a Traversable Wormhole Spacetime Geometry: researchers have begun testing a quantum gravity theory by employing the entanglement states achievable within quantum computers. In a recent experiment, a research team used Google’s Sycamore quantum computer to test the teleportation of nine qubits to see if the quintessentially quantum mechanical process could produce the same signal as if the qubits had traversed through a micro-wormhole. As reported in the journal Nature, the research team provides the data that they say confirms the holographic correspondence between quantum teleportation and traversing through a microscopic spacetime Einstein-Rosen bridge (also known as a wormhole), indicating that gravitation is operational at the scale of particle interactions, and spacetime geometry may underlie quantum mechanics.
The problem with Quantum Mechanics
Quantum mechanics is the physical theory that describes the behavior of matter (and associated forces and fields). Unlike classical mechanics, quantum mechanics is intrinsically indeterministic, and the fine-scale behavior of matter, generally at the particle level, cannot be precisely predicted but instead is described probabilistically. While the probability distributions of quantum mechanics can predict and output the correct values for observables of certain particle behaviors, the actual physical description (the ontological interpretation) of what is occurring to produce the observables has not reached a consensus model among physicists, and there exists a multitude of “interpretations” of quantum mechanics (QM) that seek to describe, fundamentally, what is physically occurring during such quintessentially quantum mechanical behaviors as quantum entanglement, tunneling, teleportation, and reduction of the state vector (a.k.a. collapse of the wavefunction or superposition). There seems to be an interpretation to fit anyone’s taste, such as the Everett many-worlds interpretation, Cramer’s transactional interpretation, the Bohr-Heisenberg (Copenhagen) interpretation, Von Neumann-Wigner (“consciousness causes collapse”) interpretation, objective collapse theories like the GRW or Diósi–Penrose (DP) model, or “hidden variables’ approaches like the de Broglie-Bohm Pilot Wave QM model (among others).
Note that the popular Copenhagen interpretation deviates from the original “pure” quantum mechanical formalism, in which there is no terminal reduction or “collapse” of the wavefunction. Therefore, in adherence to the Schrodinger equation and pure formalism of QM, in most interpretations there is no “collapse” event and the wavefunction is taken to be objectively real—instead of collapse the only thing that happens is that the overall wave function evolves unitarily and becomes more and more entangled with subsystems in the environment (that it interacts with, like observers or physicists, who are themselves in a quantum superposition just as much as any other quantum system). This insistence of the Copenhagen interpretation on reduction of the superposition via measurement leads to the philosophical notion that particles aren’t “real” until they are observed, a fundamentally untenable interpretation since the universe is filled with subsystems, any one of which can play the role of observer. In most every other QM model, particles are real they just interact nonlocally—this is called nonlocal realism— something we will see is achievable via a multiply-connected spacetime geometry.
What’s more, the quantum mechanical formalisms cannot describe one of the most important forces in all the universe: gravity. How does a physical theory that cannot explain or incorporate one of the fundamental forces of nature exist for over a century? The answer is partly in that it is erroneously thought that the gravitational force is negligible at the scale of atomic interactions, so it can be ignored. Additionally, perhaps the most significant impediment to developing a consensus theory of Quantum Gravity is that there has not been an agreed upon approach of how to bring the smooth continuum and spacetime geometrization of gravity into the discretized probabilistic world of quantum mechanics. Over a hundred years ago the father of quantum mechanics, Max Planck, discovered that the electromagnetic field of an oscillator has an infinite amount of energy when cooled down to absolute zero, or zero Kelvin, what he described as zero-point energy (ZPE). When this quantum electromagnetic energy is applied to the spacetime geometry via Einstein’s field equations, the normally smooth metric becomes infinitely curved, a multiply connected spacetime geometry that John Archibald Wheeler termed quantum spacetime foam. So, all of the elements for unifying quantum mechanics with gravity (quantum gravity) have been with us all along.
Indeed, Einstein and his colleagues seem to have laid the foundation for quantum gravity and unification, addressing what they saw as major issues with particle physics and the nonlocality of quantum mechanics. Their work may in retrospect provide the ontological understanding of the fundamental physical mechanisms of nonlocal quantum behavior and unite spacetime (general relativity) with quantum entanglement (and aspect of QM). It start with Einstein and Nathan Rosen’s paper on the “particle problem”, in which they resolved the singularity of point-particles by extending their spacetime geometry into a “bridge” architecture, connecting two universes [1]. This multiply connected spacetime geometry employed by Einstein and Rosen came to be known as Einstein-Rosen bridges, or by the more popular appellation wormholes. Einstein and Rosen’s spacetime bridges solved the pathological spacetime geometry of incomplete geodesics that were point-particles, but it suggests that particles are wormholes! (This work was later more fully developed by Wheeler, resulting in the Wheeler wormhole particle-pair).
Then, Einstein, Podoslky, and Rosen published a paper critical of the faster-than-light or nonlocal signaling that modern quantum theory seemed to permit, via what Schrödinger later coined in a letter to Einstein as “entanglement” (a translation for the German word Verschränkung), the relativity-violating behavior of which they argued indicated that quantum mechanics was an incomplete theory [2]. The nonlocal connection arising from the strong correlations (quantum entanglement) between two particles that interact and then separate described in their paper, came to be known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox correlations. Astoundingly, these historical developments have now been brought together via the insights of Juan Maldacena (who discovered the CFT/AdS holographic correspondence conjecture) and Leonard Susskind who have posited that Einstein-Rosen bridges (ER) of general relativity are the physical mechanism underlying the mysterious Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky (EPR) correlations of quantum mechanics, such that ER = EPR.
Towards a Unification Theory of Quantum Gravity
While the ER = EPR postulate has been an intriguing idea, any idea in science must have observational and experimental backing to pass into serious consideration. Now, there is a potential step-forward in this effort with tangible observational evidence of ER = EPR in an experiment that utilized qubit teleportation. The experiment was done by a team lead by Maria Spiropulu from California Institute of Technology, in a collaboration with Google’s Sycamore quantum computer in Santa Barbara, and reported in the journal Nature [3].
The work is an experimental exploration of holographic duality, which has found that certain quantum phenomena, like entanglement, can be described by a gravitational interaction, like the multiply connected spacetime geometry known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge. In the holographic-dual theory the gravitational field is described in a hypothetical 5-dimensional spacetime known as anti-de Sitter space (AdS), in which, interestingly, certain quantum mechanical processes occurring on the lower dimensional boundary can be linked to the bulk space and described using gravity or spacetime geometry.
It is called a holographic correspondence because much like a 3-D hologram emerges from the information encoded on a 2-D surface, the 5-dimensional space describing gravity is being holographically projected from the lower dimensional quantum field theory with non-gravitational forces, called a conformal field theory, that acts like the surface boundary of the AdS. In other words, the seemingly different theories (AdS and CFT) could both describe the same physical system, showing that the theories are, in a sense, equivalent—even though they each include different numbers of dimensions, and one factors in gravity while the other does not. This holographic principle is known as the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence), first discovered by Juan Maldacena in 1997 in one of the most cited physics papers of all time [4].
“Sometimes some things are easier to understand in one description than the other and knowing that you’re really talking about the same physics is very powerful.” – MIT theoretical physicist Netta Engelhardt, on the gravity / gauge theory correspondence.
Because of correspondences like these, Holographic Theory is seen by many as a bridge between the seemingly disparate physics’ frameworks of general relativity— that describes the very large scale, where gravity is the governing force— and quantum mechanics that does not normally incorporate gravitational (spacetime geometry) interactions at all. For many decades this approach has been pursued to produce a unified theory of quantum gravity, with certain notable successes like that of physicist Nassim Haramein, who utilized a generalized holographic solution that describes quantum forces, like the strong force, as arising by a gravitational interaction, see his 2012 paper Quantum Gravity and the Holographic Mass [5].
Quantum Gravity and the Information Loss Paradox
The holographic principle and the AdS/CFT correspondence are not only critical in the tiny scale of string theory, they are also very important in the context of black hole theory, because in 1975 Stephen hawking published his work on Hawking radiation, suggesting that black holes are not completely black but emit a dim radiation due to quantum effects near the event horizon. This raises an important consideration because in such a theory an isolated black hole could eventually evaporate entirely though the emission of Hawking radiation, and the information contained within would be lost, violating both classical and quantum mechanics physical laws—a problem that has been termed the information loss paradox. A way of conserving this information, is the AdS/CFT correspondence.
Since black holes are extremely dense gravitational objects, presenting strong quantum effects, they are considered the natural bridge between relativity and quantum theory. They are also more accessible and realistic than strings— which are only hypothetical— which is why it is believed that full characterization of black holes will provide the solution to quantum gravity.
In summary, quantum gravity is deeply related to the holographic principle, which refers to the fact that a “higher” dimensional gravitational theory can be formulated equivalently from a “lower” dimensional field theory. This equivalence between quantum and gravitational theories means that both descriptions of the system contain the same information, hence the term “dual”.
In the simulation performed in the quantum computer, the analog of the particle to be transferred through the holographic wormhole is a quantum bit— a qubit— in a superposition of two states. When the particle passes through the wormhole it is undergoing quantum teleportation, a process by which its information can be sent between two distant quantum-entangled initial and final states representing the black holes at both extremes. Authors examined the process of information transfer through the holographic tunnel and the experiment proved satisfactory, as the qubit was successfully recuperated at the other side of the wormhole.
Since only nine qubits were employed to simulate the whole system, (the entangled black holes plus the wormhole and particle traversing it) assisted by some artificial neural networking, many physicists argue that this simulation is too simple to really depict a simulation of a “gravitational” wormhole and it is just another experiment on teleportation [6]. Some others have remarked as well that when a black hole is simulated, this does not mean that it has been “created in a lab”. Though it seems like a matter of interpretation, the key point relies on how the holographic principle was applied here as to ensure its capacity to map and capture the gravitational aspect of the problem. If it did capture gravitational effects, then it is an empirical indication of the validity of the interpretation that the underlying physical mechanism of teleportation involves a real quantum wormhole.
Recent constructions of traversable wormholes [7,8] provide a causal probe of the ER = EPR [9] relation between entanglement and spacetime geometry, and the AdS/CFT correspondence, which previously suggested firewalls form around black holes (see William’s article Firewalls or Cool Horizons?) now shows how the Einstein-Rosen bridge connection between a pair of black holes resolves the information loss paradox. For example, while it has been shown that spinning Kerr-Newman black holes will have traversable wormholes, work in [7] has shown that even for the static Schwarzschild condition (which does not occur in nature since all black hole’s spin) the gravitational backreaction to quantum effects will induce generic couplings between the exterior regions of the pair of black holes and render the wormhole traversable. As we discussed in our article An Eventful Horizon, a consequence of this linking of black holes via a traversable wormhole spacetime geometry is that it will make a region of connected spacetime which would have been cloaked behind the horizon visible to the external boundaries.
Therefore, the results of this “wormhole on a chip” experiment has far-reaching consequences, from the fundamental physical interpretation of quantum mechanics, the understanding that particle interactions are occurring at the gravitational scale, to a potential resolution of the constantly debated information loss paradox. Certainly, future experiments of this type will provide the empirical data and observations that will ultimately reveal the role of spacetime geometry in particle physics and quantum mechanics.
Highlights:
If the qubits being used for the teleportation experiment are indeed entangled, then according to ER=EPR the wormhole is not virtual or a “holographic wormhole”, an amendment introduced in many announcements of the experiment to indicate that the role of spacetime geometry in determining the particle interaction is not actual, when in fact if the ER=EPR conjecture is correct then real micro-wormholes, not virtual or “holographic” are mediating nonlocal particle-to-particle interactions. The hang-up seems to be that when talking about wormholes, the popularized notions from movies like ‘Interstellar’ come to the fore, instead of the more technically precise description of constitutive micro-wormholes that are always present connecting particles, such that they are always entangled via the multiply connected geometry of spacetime at quantum scales and the degree to which the entanglement is evident is a function of information transfer through the network.
Even though many articles discussing this stated (in error) that “Einstein and Rosen argued, wrongly but presciently, that these ‘bridges’ (or wormholes) might represent particles”, we see from AdS/CFT that quantum entanglement can be described gravitationally via spacetime geometry. So, anytime full quantum entanglement is realized, like in a quantum computer, that is via microscopic Einstein-Rosen bridges. The micro-wormholes are always there connecting particles, and the coupling is maximal with quantum entanglement, so the more important part of the study is if the teleportation can be described just as well or better using gravity and spacetime geometry, which will show the veracity of the correspondence, and finally bring those working on quantum gravity closer to understanding that particle interactions are occurring at the gravitational scale and that gravity is fundamental to particle interactions
A particularly interesting feature of the AdS/CFT story is that the majority of physicists believe that the solution to quantum gravity will come from using quantum mechanics to “build-up” spacetime, and gravity will come out as an emergent force. So that quantum mechanics will be fundamental and spacetime, geometry, and general relativistic behaviors will emerge—holographically—from that quantum mechanical description. This is why in many reports about the experiment discussed in this article it was reported that a holographic wormhole was created when the experimenters entangled and teleported the qubits. It is viewed that the act of quantum entanglement produces the Einstein-Rosen spacetime geometry. This, however, is a backwards perspective, the quantum mechanical states emerge from the underlying spacetime geometry.
It is easy to see why most physicists are prone to see it the other way around: quantum mechanics describes the very small, general relativity describes the very large, the very large is built-up from the very small, so quantum mechanics must be fundamental in the hierarchy of the holographic duality. But as we have seen, there seems to be a prolific misunderstanding of the history of physics, with physicists and reporters stating things like “Einstein hated quantum mechanics”, when in fact Einstein founded QM, when he applied Planck’s quantized unit to explain the photoelectric effect and photons. What Einstein disliked about quantum mechanics is some of the same problems that persist to this day, such as the problem of the electron being described as a point-like particle (how does a 1-dimensional point spin?), which is why Einstein and Rosen described them as spacetime bridges (i.e., wormholes), removing the problem of singularity.
While it is true that general relativity is most often applied to describe astronomical-scale objects and interactions, it seems to be forgotten that general relativity is an extension of special relativity, which describes the behavior of the very small—photons—and the corresponding mass, time, and spatial dilations / contractions that occur at relativistic velocities. As such, it is not entirely accurate to consider relativity as only applying to the very large, and so the conventional hierarchy of quantum mechanics being fundamental to general relativity is misguided.
We observe the phenomenal quantum mechanical states, like non-locality and wave-particle duality, because of the behavior of the underlying spacetime, like micro-Einstein-Rosen bridges and pilot waves in the superfluid medium of space.
As explained in the article by Lee Smolin, entitled Space: The Final Illusion, there is good evidence that the violations of causality needed to explain the nonlocality brought on by quantum entanglement will emerge with the quantum theory of gravity (as Fotini Markopoulou et al. first proposed in 2003). This would replace the existent statistical treatment provided by the standard quantum mechanics, by a complete and exact description of what goes on in every individual quantum process based on influences traveling arbitrarily faster than light. This fact dismantles the principle of relativistic causality, as well as our intuitive notions of local influence. From such point of view, locality, and space itself emerge from averaging over fundamental processes involving a diversity of individual events that will disorder locality, having most influences locally because most of the time, causally related events will end up close to each other in the emergent phenomena we call space. But there will be many causally related pairs of events that will end up far from each other and thus disordering space and locality. This supports what we had mentioned earlier in the introduction: in most QM models (except for the Copenhagen interpretation) particles are real, they just interact nonlocally —a nonlocal realism— via a multiply-connected spacetime geometry.
In addition, as Lee Smolin says, there is theoretical evidence that quantum theory of gravity will require space and spacetime to become discrete and constructed out of finite atoms of geometry. Such finite atoms of geometry could very well be the Planck Spherical Units (PSU) proposed by Haramein.
Therefore, for the holographic approach to unify quantum mechanics and gravity, the principle must be generalized as to consider the information contained in the volume, not just in the surface of a black hole. This is what Nassim Haramein achieved in his generalized holographic approach, by computing the real energy content in the volume, using a quantization of space called Planck spherical units (with an energy density of 10113 joules per cubic meter), representing each a quantum vacuum fluctuation, as well as a quantum of angular momentum, and a bit of information. The quantum gravity solution demonstrated how a highly curved spacetime geometry, or strong gravity, is the nuclear confining force. Through the generalized holographic solution, it is demonstrated how a proton can have the holographic mass of 1053 kilograms (based on its internal PSU information content), yet we only measure a tiny fraction of that mass-energy (~10-27 kg): there is a “screening” of the total mass energy due to the holographic relationship between the proton charge radius (acting as a surface boundary similar to an event horizon) and the internal volume of the hadron.
Thanks to the holographic solution, we can now understand that the energy in Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 refers only to the usable energy that has expressed as mass. That mass appearing in the equation is not reflecting the real energy content, be it a proton, and electron, a planet, a star, or the universe. Haramein was able to compute the real energy content in the volume of a proton, using the Planck Spherical units. Then, by diving the energy content of the surface of a proton, by the energy content in the volume, and multiplying such ratio -the holographic ratio- by the Planck mass, he finds the mass of the proton, with experimental accuracy! Therefore, what we call mass, results from an inertia in the information transfer from volume to surface, and it emerges from the quantum vacuum, with no need for Higgs mechanism.
While the inverse, the energy content in the volume divided by the one on the surface, and multiplied by the Planck mass, gives exactly the mass computed by the Schwarzschild solution to Einstein’s field equations, meaning then that once considering the real energy-mass content of the proton, it obeys the condition of a back hole. It’s a mini black hole.
The real energy content in the volume of a Hadron (it’s holographic mass), amounts to the baryonic mass of the universe, which is a cosmological black hole once all energy mass contributions are considered. Therefore, the proton is the holographic unit of the universe, and that would explain its otherwise inexplicable stability. That would also explain the real origin of the holographic principle.
In summary, voxelating with these PSUs to compute the surface and volume energy of a system taken as spherical as first approximation, Haramein computes de total energy content of the system and defines an information and energy transfer ratio between surface and volume -the holographic ratio- and proves that it is this ratio that explains the emergence of mass. This holographic solution has given the most striking results by predicting the proton muonic radius (most recently confirmed by the latest electronic hydrogen measurements from Bezginov et al. 2019) within 1σ standard deviation, and as mentioned earlier, it describes quantum forces, like the strong force, as arising by a gravitational interaction [4].
For more details of this approach, read our series on the generalized holographic model, parts I, II and III.
Addendum
Following initial publication of this article, further analysis have indicated that there may be some significant considerations that suggests the qubit-wormhole teleportation experiment did not actually demonstrate gravitational teleportation through a micro-wormhole. The reasons for this are detailed, but in brief: it has been suggested that the function specifying the evolution of state of the qubit system, which was highly “refined” via a machine-learning procedure, did not exhibit key features expected of gravitational teleportation via a traversable wormhole. One of the issues is that the qubit system generated by the machine-learning refinement was fully commutative, and SYK qubit systems are non-commutative. So while the sparsification process preserved key aspects of a SYK quantum gravitational qubit system, it was not exact, and being fully commutative the qubit system simulated by the researchers does not replicate a key feature thought to occur with wormhole teleportation, which is the scrambling of information at one end (of the wormhole) and reconstitution at the other— like an egg being broken and scrambled and then spontaneously “unscrambling” and becoming a whole intact egg again. The full critique is detailed in the report Comment on “Comment on “Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor“.
So even when there are strong indications of gravitational interaction in a qubit teleportation experiment, such as in the Google Sycamore quantum computer experiment, there are still significant challenges to showing conclusively that quantum gravitational physics were involved.
The idea that information will be “scrambled” and subsequently reconstituted upon transit through a wormhole is suspect: in traversable wormhole of the Kerr-Newman metric, where there is a naked ring singularity, and the wormhole is traversable because an object can avoid traversing through a singularity that would cause scrambling.
Moreover, because quantum vacuum fluctuations are taken as random in modern physics, and happening at the Planck scale, it is therefore believed that the holographic teleportation protocol requires information to scramble completely when entering a wormhole, and then it is reconstructed at the other end.
The main criticism towards the assumption that this protocol did in fact create a wormhole in the lab, is based on such presupposition; the information was not scrambled enough, and hence, the wormhole was not really achieved.
We would like to clarify that such a statement could only apply if the premise of randomness and Planck length limit were applicable. But from the perspective of the Generalized Holographic theory, information does not scramble because the sub-Planck domain prevents this from happening; the ordering goes below Planck scale. Additionally, the randomness that is presupposed at the Planck scale, is not the actual framework from which the GHM works; the model provides an ordering structure and dynamics of the quantum vacuum plasma from which we explain the emergence of mass, forces and fields.
References:
[1] Einstein, Albert & Rosen, Nathan (1935). “The Particle Problem in the General Theory of Relativity”. Physical Review. 48 (1): 73.
[2] Einstein, A; B Podolsky; N Rosen (1935-05-15). “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?” (PDF). Physical Review. 47 (10): 777–780.
[3] D. Jafferis et al., “Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor,” Nature, vol. 612, no. 7938, Art. no. 7938, Dec. 2022, doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05424-3
[4] Juan Martin Maldacena (1998). “The Large N Limit of Superconformal Field Theories and Supergravity”. Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2 (2): 231–252. arXiv:hep-th/9711200
[5] Haramein, N. (2012). Quantum Gravity and the Holographic Mass, Physical Review & Research International, ISSN: 2231-1815, Page 270-292
[6] A. R. Brown and L. Susskind, “A holographic wormhole traversed in a quantum computer,” Nature, vol. 612, no. 7938, pp. 41–42, Dec. 2022, doi: 10.1038/d41586-022-03832-z
[7] P. Gao, D.L. Jafferis and A.C. Wall, Traversable Wormholes via a Double Trace Deformation, JHEP 12 (2017) 151
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