(Sci-News) Before now, no one was able to describe entanglement in chemical reactions. The process requires continuous measurements, such as the various angles of beams that scatter the reactants and force them to contact and transform into products.
Now, however, a duo of researchers at Purdue University has modified a popular theorem — called Bell’s inequality — for identifying quantum entanglement and applied it to chemical reactions. Professor Sabre Kais, lead author of the study said, “For the first time, we have a practical way to measure it.”
Professor Kais and his colleague, Junxu Li, generalized Bell’s inequality to include continuous measurements in chemical reactions.
“We don’t yet know what outputs we can control by taking advantage of entanglement in a chemical reaction — just that these outputs will be different,” Professor Kais said. “Making entanglement measurable in these systems is an important first step.”