Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission
Nuclear fission presents a unique example of quantum entanglement in strongly interacting many-body systems. A heavy nucleus can split into hundreds of combinations of two complementary fragments in the fission process. The entanglement of fragment wave functions is persistent even after separation...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2025-02-01
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| Series: | Physics Letters B |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269325000085 |
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| author | Yu Qiang Junchen Pei Kyle Godbey |
| author_facet | Yu Qiang Junchen Pei Kyle Godbey |
| author_sort | Yu Qiang |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Nuclear fission presents a unique example of quantum entanglement in strongly interacting many-body systems. A heavy nucleus can split into hundreds of combinations of two complementary fragments in the fission process. The entanglement of fragment wave functions is persistent even after separation and impacts the partition of particles and energies between fragments. Based on microscopic dynamical calculations of the fission of 240Pu, this work finds that dynamical quantum entanglement is indispensable in the appearance of sawtooth distributions of average excitation energies of fragments and thus neutron multiplicities, but not in average neutron excess of fragments. Both sawtooth slopes from particle-number projections are found to be steep – a feature which can be alleviated by random fluctuations. The persistent entanglement is mainly due to non-adiabatic dynamics since the final splitting is so fast that the non-localization of wave functions is kept during the separation. These findings may impact the understanding of quantum entanglement more broadly in mesoscopic systems. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-268cba71414b4419b301fbead17f3f5f |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 0370-2693 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-02-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Physics Letters B |
| spelling | doaj-art-268cba71414b4419b301fbead17f3f5f2025-02-10T04:33:52ZengElsevierPhysics Letters B0370-26932025-02-01861139248Quantum entanglement in nuclear fissionYu Qiang0Junchen Pei1Kyle Godbey2State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, ChinaState Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; Southern Center for Nuclear-Science Theory (SCNT), Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Huizhou 516000, China; Corresponding author.Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USANuclear fission presents a unique example of quantum entanglement in strongly interacting many-body systems. A heavy nucleus can split into hundreds of combinations of two complementary fragments in the fission process. The entanglement of fragment wave functions is persistent even after separation and impacts the partition of particles and energies between fragments. Based on microscopic dynamical calculations of the fission of 240Pu, this work finds that dynamical quantum entanglement is indispensable in the appearance of sawtooth distributions of average excitation energies of fragments and thus neutron multiplicities, but not in average neutron excess of fragments. Both sawtooth slopes from particle-number projections are found to be steep – a feature which can be alleviated by random fluctuations. The persistent entanglement is mainly due to non-adiabatic dynamics since the final splitting is so fast that the non-localization of wave functions is kept during the separation. These findings may impact the understanding of quantum entanglement more broadly in mesoscopic systems.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269325000085 |
| spellingShingle | Yu Qiang Junchen Pei Kyle Godbey Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission Physics Letters B |
| title | Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission |
| title_full | Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission |
| title_fullStr | Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission |
| title_full_unstemmed | Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission |
| title_short | Quantum entanglement in nuclear fission |
| title_sort | quantum entanglement in nuclear fission |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269325000085 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT yuqiang quantumentanglementinnuclearfission AT junchenpei quantumentanglementinnuclearfission AT kylegodbey quantumentanglementinnuclearfission |