Machine Heart Compilation
Machine Heart Editorial Department
Endurance and fast charging problems to solve one, the promotion of trams will not be much of an obstacle.
Whether it is photovoltaics or fusion, sooner or later human civilization will have to turn to renewable energy. Given humanity's growing energy needs and the finite nature of fossil fuels, this trend is irreversible. In order to develop alternative energy sources, humans have carried out a lot of research, most of which use electricity as the main energy carrier.
As renewable energy products and equipment receive more attention, people's lives have also changed, most notably the popularity of electric vehicles. Although electric cars were rarely seen on the road 10 years ago, they are now selling millions a year, making it one of the fastest growing industries in the market.
Unlike conventional cars, which derive energy from the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels, electric vehicles rely on batteries as storage medium for their energy. For a long time, the energy density of batteries was much lower than that of hydrocarbons, which led to very low range of early electric vehicles. However, gradual improvements in battery technology eventually put the range of electric vehicles at an acceptable level compared to fuel vehicles. It is no exaggeration to say that improvements in battery storage technology are one of the major technical bottlenecks that must be addressed to trigger the current electric vehicle revolution.
However, despite the huge advances in battery technology, today's EV consumers face another conundrum: slow battery charging. Currently, it takes about 10 hours for a car to be fully charged at home. Even the fastest supercharger at the charging station takes up to 20 to 40 minutes to fully charge the vehicle, which introduces additional costs and inconveniences.
To solve this problem, scientists began looking for answers in the field of quantum physics. Through their research, they found that quantum technology may lead to new mechanisms that speed up battery charging.
Quantum battery technology was first proposed in a groundbreaking paper published by Alicki and Fannes in 2012. Theoretically, quantum resources (such as entanglement) can charge all the single cells in the battery pack as a collective charging, greatly speeding up the battery pack charging process.
Alicki and Fannes' 2012 paper. Thesis link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.1209.pdf
This conclusion is exciting because modern high-capacity battery packs will contain many single batteries, and in classical battery packs, each single battery is charged in a separate and parallel manner, and it is impossible to charge as a whole. This gap between aggregate charging and parallel charging can be measured by a ratio called quantum charging superiority.
Traditional Charging Method VS. Quantum Charging Method. Traditional batteries are charged in parallel, which means that each battery is charged independently. In contrast, quantum batteries are treated as a whole during charging, which is achieved using entangling operations.
Around 2017, researchers noticed that this quantum superiority could come from two ways: global operations, in which all single cells communicate with other single cells at the same time, like everyone sitting around a table; and all-to-all coupling, like many discussion groups, but only two members of each group.
Over the past few years, researchers have been unclear whether both sources are necessary and whether there are any limits to the speeds of charging that can be achieved.
Recently, scientists at the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems at the Korea Institute of Basic Sciences (IBS) have further explored these questions.
The paper, selected as an editor in the Journal of Physical Review Letters, shows that all-to-all coupling is irrelevant in quantum batteries, and that the existence of global operations is the only factor in quantum superiority. The team further analyzed the precise sources of this superiority while ruling out other possibilities, and then provided a way to design the battery.
Link to the official edition of the paper: https://journals.aps.org/prl/accepted/b2071Y51Ued1187a36cd9e31803b4e2fe0b5fa51e
Preprint link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.02491.pdf
In addition, the team was able to precisely quantify the charging speed that the scheme could achieve. The maximum charging speed of classical batteries increases linearly with the increase in the number of single batteries, but this study shows that the charging speed of quantum batteries using global operations can achieve a secondary exponential increase.
For example, if you have an electric car, the number of batteries per battery is 200. Using this quantum charging technology, your tram will charge 200 times faster than a conventional battery. This means that the speed of charging at home will be reduced from 10 hours to 3 minutes, and the speed of charging at high-speed charging stations will be reduced from 30 minutes to seconds.
As far as the field of electric vehicles is concerned, some people think that the future of this technical direction is not very clear, after all, it is still in the pure theoretical stage, it may take decades or even hundreds of years to achieve, in contrast, the continued development of power exchange infrastructure services may be more practical.
Still, the researchers say the impact of quantum charging is far-reaching, potentially far beyond electric vehicles and consumer electronics. For example, future fusion power plants may use this technology, because these power stations need to charge and discharge a large amount of electrical energy in a very short period of time. Of course, quantum technology is still in its infancy, and there is still a long way to go to achieve practical applications of these methods. However, findings such as these create a promising direction that could incentivize institutions and businesses to invest further in these technologies.
Do you think this technology is reliable?