{"id":472,"date":"2026-04-17T14:29:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T14:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/?p=472"},"modified":"2026-04-17T14:29:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T14:29:00","slug":"quantum-jamming-explores-the-truly-fundamental-principles-of-nature-quanta-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/?p=472","title":{"rendered":"Quantum \u201cjamming\u201d explores the truly fundamental principles of nature | Quanta Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>For the past few decades, researchers have known that quantum computers would eventually be able to crack the codes widely used to secure much of the digital world. To protect against this fate, they have spent years developing new code that would be safe from future safecracks using quantum computers.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, they also devised an ingenious way to keep communications secure using the rules of quantum mechanics. However, quantum mechanics, like &#8220;classical&#8221; mechanics before it, is just a theory of nature. What if a more complete theory eventually replaces it, just as quantum mechanics replaced Newtonian physics a century ago? Would these quantum communication technologies be safe even in a world with more fundamental rules?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s good to be paranoid when it comes to these cryptographic protocols,&#8221; said Ravishankar Ramanathan, a quantum information theorist at the University of Hong Kong who studies quantum cryptography. &#8220;Let&#8217;s minimize the assumptions behind the protocol. Let&#8217;s assume that in the future people realize that quantum mechanics is not the ultimate theory of nature.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a possibility worth considering. The difficulty of open questions such as reconciling quantum mechanics and gravity suggests that a post-quantum theory of nature may contain something entirely unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>Some quantum cryptographers are looking for further underlying fundamental principles to guard against the possibility that protocols are based on incorrect assumptions. Rather than starting with quantum mechanics, they dig deeper into the concept of cause and effect.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>subtle acts of sabotage<\/strong><\/h2>\n<aside class=\"post__aside mb2 relative post__aside--right\">\n<figure class=\"mb2 mt1 image--shortcode s:mt-0\">\n<div class=\"relative image mx0\">\n            <\/div><figcaption class=\"image__meta mt1\">\n<div class=\"caption wysiwyg h5 theme__anchors--solid fill-h post__aside__caption post__aside__caption--shortcode\">\n<p>Ravishankar Ramanathan is a quantum information theorist at the University of Hong Kong, working on quantum cryptography.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"attribution theme__anchors--solid wysiwyg pangram h6 mb1 fill-h post__aside__attribution\">\n<p>Courtesy of Ravishankar Ramanathan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/aside>\n<p>One way to understand developments in this field is to consider quantum key distribution. This involves leveraging the rules of quantum mechanics to secretly pass a key (which can be used to decrypt a secret message) in a way that cannot be tampered with. Quantum key distribution takes advantage of quantum entanglement, which locks two particles together through one of their properties, such as spin. Quantum entanglement contains something like a tripwire. If someone tries to tamper with the tangle, just as someone tries to steal a key, the intrusion destroys the tangle and reveals the sabotage. This is due to a fundamental quantum mechanical principle called &#8220;entanglement monogamy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But what happens when this principle no longer holds? In such cases, if the person sending the message did not have full control of the device, an outsider could subtly alter the particle entanglement and interrupt the communication without leaving a trace.<\/p>\n<p>This process is called quantum disturbance, and efforts to understand it have mushroomed in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>For many scientists, jamming is appealing because it helps them better understand both quantum mechanics and the nature of cause and effect. they wonder. Are there deep principles that prohibit sabotage and make sabotage impossible, or can sabotage occur in the real world if it is not prohibited in principle?<\/p>\n<h2><strong>jammer&#8217;s gym<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Micha\u0142 Eckstein, a theoretical physicist at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, likes to explain narrative disruption. Its main characters are Alice and Bob, classic characters that appear in the explanation of quantum mechanics.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"post__aside mb2 relative mha post__aside--right hide-on-print\">\n<div class=\"post__aside__pullquote relative\">\n<div class=\"pullquote theme__text mb2 align-c\">\n<div class=\"mb1\">\n<p>Are these quantum communication technologies safe even in a world with more fundamental rules?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>&#8220;Suppose you have Alice and Bob, and they meet Jim the Jammer, a magician,&#8221; Eckstein says. &#8220;The magician says, &#8216;I have two balls. One is white and one is black.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>A ball replaces a pair of entangled particles. When two particles are entangled, they have properties that are linked in some way. For example, if we measure the first particle and find that its spin is increasing, the spin of the other particle will necessarily decrease, and vice versa. This is true even if the other particles are halfway across the universe. Here the balls are linked so that if one is white, the other is always black.<\/p>\n<p>In a classic metaphor of stage magic, Jim shows the audience how balls are placed in two boxes, shuffled, and passed to Alice and Bob. At the moment, no one knows which ball is in which box.<\/p>\n<p>Alice and Bob then board a rocket ship and fly away in opposite directions at near-light speeds. After a while, Alice opens her box and Bob opens his. But in the meantime Jim performed a trick and the ball changed.<\/p>\n<p>At first, neither Alice nor Bob notice Jim&#8217;s interference. Each expects a white or black ball to appear 50% of the time, and when each opens the box, the ball will be either white or black. Nothing Jim does can change that.<\/p>\n<p>However, when Alice and Bob meet back on Earth, the magician&#8217;s trick is revealed. When Alice and Bob compare their measurements, they find that the balls are the same color. Jim changed the intertwined nature of the balls from opposite colors to perfectly matching ones.<\/p>\n<p>This is the basic idea, but in reality the process of quantum disturbance is a little more complicated.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"post__aside mb2 relative post__aside--right\">\n<figure class=\"mb2 mt1 image--shortcode s:mt-0\">\n<div class=\"relative image mx0\">\n        <img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"704\" height=\"704\" src=\"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776466351_837_Quantum-jamming-explores-the-truly-fundamental-principles-of-nature.webp.webp\" class=\"block fit-x fill-h fill-v is-loaded mxa\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776466351_837_Quantum-jamming-explores-the-truly-fundamental-principles-of-nature.webp.webp 704w, https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mirjam-Weilenmann-coMirjam-Weilenmann-520x520.webp 520w, https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mirjam-Weilenmann-coMirjam-Weilenmann-160x160.webp 160w, https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mirjam-Weilenmann-coMirjam-Weilenmann-98x98.webp 98w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 704px) 100vw, 704px\"\/>    <\/div><figcaption class=\"image__meta mt1\">\n<div class=\"caption wysiwyg h5 theme__anchors--solid fill-h post__aside__caption post__aside__caption--shortcode\">\n<p>Mirjam Wilenmann is a researcher at the French national research institute Inria, working on the fundamentals of quantum information and quantum theory.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/aside>\n<p>In the mid-1990s, Jakob Gr\u00fcnhaus, Sandu Popescu, and Daniel Roerich were exploring how far their theory could go beyond the rules of quantum mechanics, while still respecting Einstein&#8217;s core principle: &#8220;You cannot transmit information faster than the speed of light.&#8221; Einstein&#8217;s mid-century thought experiments showed that without this &#8220;no signal&#8221; principle, the very concept of cause and effect begins to fray. Since then, the no-signaling principle has become a central assumption as physicists consider what lies beyond quantum mechanics. &#8220;What we take very seriously when working on quantum foundations is the no-signaling principle,&#8221; said Mirjam Wilenmann of the French national research institute Inria.<\/p>\n<p>Gr\u00fcnhaus, Popescu, and Roerich imagined jamming as a type of superentanglement that can disrupt entangled particles. Just as measurement devices can be used to determine the fate of distant entangled particles, virtual jammers can be used to alter the correlation between pairs of distant entangled particles. Some physicists argue that if this disturbance procedure followed some important rules, it would be possible to secretly disrupt quantum entanglement without disrupting causality.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of \u200b\u200bquantum disturbance is so strange that initially physicists had no idea what to make of it. \u201cWe wrote the paper and that was it,\u201d Popescu said.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>cause and effect<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>After 20 years, the time is right to explore it further.<\/p>\n<p>Quantum cryptography has grown as quantum computers have moved from a theoretical idea to real-world experimentation. In the first decade of the 2000s, several groups developed device-independent quantum key distribution, a quantum cryptographic procedure that relies on entanglement monogamy.<\/p>\n<p>Ramanathan and Pawe\u0142 Horodecki were thinking about these protocols in 2016 when they came across a paper by Grunhaus, Popescu, and Rohrlich. &#8220;We started to realize that once we start allowing this kind of interfering correlation, the monogamous properties underlying device-independent cryptography completely break down,&#8221; Ramanathan said.<\/p>\n<p>Immediately, jamming became the subject of lively discussion. Many researchers felt that something important was missing from this thought experiment. Although we can&#8217;t use jamming to send signals faster than light, influencing the state of quantum particles far away still feels like the kind of &#8220;spooky action at a distance&#8221; that plagued Einstein long ago.<\/p>\n<p>But for some researchers, the discomfort caused by quantum interference is sparking new ideas. &#8220;We think it&#8217;s a useful tool to hone our intuition about what the correct definition of causality is,&#8221; said Roger Colbeck, who proposed one of the first protocols for device-independent encryption in his 2006 doctoral thesis.<\/p>\n<p>Colbeck, now at King&#8217;s College in London, is collaborating with V. Villasini of the Center for Inrian Studies at the University of Grenoble-Alpes to classify different theories of how cause and effect work. For them, jamming serves as a useful edge case. They are exploring other fundamental principles, such as the no-signaling principle, that explain which rules violate jamming.<\/p>\n<p>Ramanathan and Holodecki&#8217;s group responded to this study and Wilenmann&#8217;s recent paper in a December 2025 preprint co-authored with Eckstein, Tomasz Miller, and Pawe\u0142 Holodecki&#8217;s father Rishard. Now, researchers are having conversations, trying to clarify terminology, correct misconceptions, and explore the fundamental principles behind physical theories.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the most interesting question to me,&#8221; Eckstein said. &#8220;Is there some new physics behind it? Does physics include such phenomena?&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Quantum #jamming #explores #fundamental #principles #nature #Quanta #Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the past few decades, researchers have known that quantum computers would eventually be able to crack the codes widely used to secure much of the digital world. To protect against this fate, they have spent years developing new code that would be safe from future safecracks using quantum computers. At the same time, they &#8230; <a title=\"Quantum \u201cjamming\u201d explores the truly fundamental principles of nature | Quanta Magazine\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/?p=472\" aria-label=\"Read more about Quantum \u201cjamming\u201d explores the truly fundamental principles of nature | Quanta Magazine\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[574,575,573,579,577,576,578,572],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-explores","tag-fundamental","tag-jamming","tag-magazine","tag-nature","tag-principles","tag-quanta","tag-quantum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}