Quantum entanglement, not oil or coal, powers new kind of engine

Quantum technology has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years thanks to computers that exploit atomic properties, hard drives that hold information in unusual states, and now engines that break free from the old rules.

These strange engines do not rely on burning anything, nor do they feed on heat. Instead, they gain their push from the unusual behavior of tiny particles.

Quantum mechanics sets the stage for all of this. It is not concerned with big objects, but with what happens at the smallest scales.

It looks at atoms, molecules, and subatomic bits of matter that do not follow everyday rules. It has sparked new gadgets that tackle problems we never knew we could solve.

The paper describing these results is co-authored by researchers Keerthy Menon, Dr. Eloisa Cuestas, Dr. Thomas Fogarty and Prof. Thomas Busch and has been published in the journal Nature.

Humble origins of the quantum engine

Scientists from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), working with teams from the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau and the University of Stuttgart, designed an engine that does not mimic the noisy machines found under a car’s hood.

They picked out a trick from the quantum playbook: the use of entanglement.

Quantum entanglement has been puzzling scientists for decades. Albert Einstein once called it “spooky action at a distance.”

In normal life, nothing moves faster than light. Yet, entangled particles link up so that what happens to one seems to affect the other instantly, even when they sit far apart.

Particles that bend the rules

In regular machines, a piston moves when hot gases expand. In the quantum engine, movement comes from changing how particles behave.

Not all particles are alike. Some belong to a group called bosons, others to a group called fermions. At very low temperatures, bosons settle into states of lower energy than fermions do.

This difference in energy turns out to be key. Instead of fire and heat, changing bosons into fermions and back can create work.

In this design, particles step through changes in their quantum character, and that shifting property runs the engine.

“To turn fermions into bosons, you can take two fermions and combine them into a molecule. This new molecule is a boson,” explained Prof. Thomas Busch, leader of the Quantum Systems Unit.

“Breaking it up allows us to retrieve the fermions again. By doing this cyclically, we can power the engine without using heat,”

Energy without burning anything

A normal engine ignites fuel. The quantum engine avoids that step. It switches particle types and uses the resulting energy difference.

While this type of engine only works in the quantum regime, the team found that its efficiency is quite high and can reach up to 25% with the present experimental set up built by the collaborators in Germany.

These results show that quantum effects are not just textbook oddities. They can do something useful, at least in controlled lab conditions. Still, everyone involved knows that real-world applications are not right around the corner.

“While these systems can be highly efficient, we have only done a proof-of-concept together with our experimental collaborators,” explained Keerthy Menon. “There are still many challenges in building a useful quantum engine.”

Quantum engine keeps it cool

Quantum devices are notoriously finicky. Heat destroys the delicate conditions they need to operate. Any slight bump in temperature can throw the system off.

To keep it stable, scientists must chill everything. That in itself takes serious effort and energy. Avoiding heat within the engine means building an environment that is as calm and cold as possible.

This research moves in a direction that might help people think differently about how to extract energy from materials.

Instead of relying on old-fashioned methods, it encourages rethinking the nature of what energy is and how it can be tapped at its source, without needing the spark of a flame.

What happens next?

This is only the start. The researchers plan on pushing forward, asking tough questions about how the engine operates at the most basic level. They hope to see how it might hook into other devices, such as tiny batteries or precise sensors.

There are many pieces left to fit together, but the core idea is out in the open. The quantum world offers behaviors that do not show up in ordinary life.

If scientists can keep these particles stable, control their states, and move them through clever cycles, then a whole new class of engines could arise.

The current research never hints at swapping out standard car engines anytime soon. The point is not to run our trucks and buses on quantum effects. It is to understand what is possible.

For those curious about where quantum technology might lead, this is a hint that there might be more surprises ahead.

Window into a strange world

Quantum mechanics once seemed too weird to ever become useful.

Now it’s powering computers that crunch through problems with speed we could not have dreamed of, and it’s setting up communication channels that might be too secure for any hacker to break.

Adding engines to that list, even if they stay in the lab, shifts the way we think about how technology can run.

It is not about making a machine better than a car engine right now. It’s about seeing that there is another way.

Without burning fuel or relying on hot gases, particles at the smallest levels have a kind of energy all their own.

By turning fermions into bosons and back again, researchers have shown that change itself can power a tiny, efficient engine. This small step is just one more example of how quantum physics can show us unexpected possibilities.

The full study was published in the journal Nature.

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