Quantum physics sheds light on cells by Stephen Pincock, ABC Monday, 4 February 2013 For the first time,

Australian scientists have explored the inner workings of a living cell using a new kind of laser microscopy that harnesses the laws of quan tum physics. The technique could shed light on new biological processes, the motion of micros copic particles, and even allow quantum mechanics to be studied at a scale visib le to the naked eye, says the study's lead author, physicist Dr Warwick Bowen fr om the University of Queensland. When scientists want to study the miniscule goings-on within a living cell, they come up against a limit known as "quantum shot noise," Bowen and colleagues exp lain in the latest issue of the journal Nature Photonics. This phenomenon is a result of the fact that light particles, or photons, hit th e microscope's detection device randomly. "You can get the idea if you imagine the photons are raindrops falling on a squa re of ground, and you were to count the number hitting the ground in a given tim e interval," Bowen explains. "Obviously, there'll be some randomness in the numb er hitting the ground in a given time - this is shot noise." To study biological systems such as cells, scientists aim to detect very small l evels of scattered light from an object within the biological specimen. Because the level of scattering from these tiny objects is so small, it can easily be ob scured by shot noise. "You can solve this by increasing your laser power," says Bowen. "Then, since yo u're measuring more photons per time interval, the error in your measurement imp roves. However, in living systems you simply cannot keep increasing the optical power - very soon you fry the cell." The team of researchers from the University of Queensland and the Australian Nat ional University overcame this problem by "quantum correlating" photons, a pheno menon also known as entanglement. In effect, this allows them to control the pho tons so they hit the detector in bunches with a well defined number. This is the first time this has been shown to work in a biological sample, Bowen says. Squeezing light To generate their quantum-correlated light, the researchers used a process calle d optical parametric oscillation. They took single photons, and "broke" them int o pairs of photons, each with half the energy of the original photon. The quantum correlations also allowed the researchers to "squeeze" the fluctuati ons of the amplitude of the light by 75 per cent. "This should allow, in princip le, a factor of four improvement in sensitivity in our measurements. However som e imperfections in the measurements themselves meant that we achieved only a fac tor of two or so improvement," Bowen says. The technique is technically challenging, and at this stage it is unclear how im portant it will be, he notes. "If there turns out to be important biological processes occurring that cannot b e observed without quantum correlations, then the technique could be very import ant to understand those processes. We don't know the answer to this yet - it rem

ains to be discovered." "We do know that the technique could be very helpful in observing phenomena in t he microscopic motion of small particles that have yet to be observed and were p redicted many decades ago. "We also know that this technique could be important for studying truly fundamen tal physics - where the quantum correlations between photons could be transferre d onto particles consisting of 10^16 atoms or so." "This would push the theory of quantum mechanics out of the microscopic world an d into massive objects that you can see by eye - testing the theory in a regime never before accessed. "Many groups in the world are trying to achieve this goal but I can't emphasis e nough how challenging it is." source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/02/04/3681478.htm#.UaXw3NiEU wo