IIT Guwahati new innovation

In yet another steps toward innovation and research, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati and the university of Stellenbosch,South Africa worked on one of the most profound mysteries in physics, the quantum nature of gravity.

This research is led by Dr Bibhas Ranjan Majhi , Associate Professor in the Department of Physics IIT Guwahati and Dr Partha Nandi of the University of Stellenbosch,South Africa.
The research lay emphasis on gravity-induced entanglement (GIE) . This phenomenon has the potential to bridge two biggest pillars in modern science. The two pillars being ,general relativity and quantum mechanics. Their work focuses on understanding how gravity behaves at smaller scales such as those of atoms and subatomic particles, where existing theories start to unravel.

At present Physics operates under two different frameworks. Where Albert Einstein's general relativity shows how gravity works for massive objects like planets and stars, describing gravity as the curvature of space and time around these objects. The quantum mechanics dictates the behaviour of particles on the atomic and subatomic levels. Both these theories excel in their respective domains, however they fail to align when it comes to explaining how gravity functions at the quantum level. The disconnect has left a significant gap in our understanding, one that researchers hope to address through the pursuit of quantum gravity.

While talking about the research, Dr Majhi explained, "We have developed a theoretical framework that connects a two-dimensional quantum harmonic oscillator with gravitational waves” ripples in space-time caused by massive objects like black holes. This approach bypasses the limitations of classical communication methods and explores whether quantised gravitational waves can induce entanglement. Our findings show that while classical gravitational waves do not generate entanglement, the quantum version of these waves does, at the second order of gravitational perturbation."

Dr Majhi and Dr Nandi's work shows a significant effort towards the quest to understand the quantum nature of gravity. The research advances the search for gravity, in addition it also lays the foundation for future discoveries.