Dawei Lu team reverses heat flow in quantum qubits
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- Dawei Lu and his team at Southern University of Science and Technology in China reported a reversal of heat flow using a molecule of crotonic acid.
- Crotonic acid—a molecule of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen—provided four carbon nuclei that the researchers used as qubits.
- The four carbon‑nucleus qubits were manipulated with electromagnetic bursts to direct heat from a lower‑temperature qubit to a higher‑temperature one.
- Quantum coherence was injected and controlled as the energy source enabling the backward heat flow.
- The experiment suggests that the second law of thermodynamics may need updating for quantum regimes.
Why it matters: The finding shows that quantum coherence can act as a fuel to reverse heat flow, challenging the classical second law of thermodynamics and suggesting new mechanisms for thermal control in quantum computing hardware. This could reshape how researchers design cooling strategies and energy budgets for quantum processors.
