DR JACQ ROMERO, L’Oréal-UNESCO’s 2017 Australian Fellow for Women in Science
For over ten years the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science program has supported Australian female scientists with the aim of ensuring that women are fairly represented at all levels in science.
The program looks to encourage more young women to enter the profession and to assist them once their careers are in progress. In 2017, L’Oréal Australia announced the addition of a fourth $25,000 Australian Fellowship.
Winner of a 2017 Australian Fellowship, Dr Jacq Romero’s research with the University of Queensland, lies within the rapidly emerging and increasingly important field of quantum physics and the theory of entanglement. That applies to information being shared between particles regardless of how far apart they are, even at opposite ends of the universe.
“I work with photons which are the particles of light and their orbital angular momentum, which is associated with their twisted shape”, Dr. Romero informed ACSM.
The quantum world is relatively unknown, but already physicists are predicting that it has incredible potential to increase transmission of information, improve security and lead to exciting new technological advancements. “I work in quantum information. I want to understand quantum information in the space of higher dimensions because I believe it is important for the future of computation and communication.”
There is still limited knowledge around how quantum information works in high dimensions, and therefore the full advantage and potential quantum information in this space is yet to be realised. Dr. Romero’s work sets out to provide the first experimental evidence to an existing theory to verify the fundamental differences in the way information works for larger quantum alphabets, compared to the classical encoding system we use today. Her findings will provide critical knowledge as we start to access more benefits of the quantum world.
“You can pack more information into one particle of light or photon if you use its shape, because there are theoretically infinite amounts of different shapes light can be. This is important especially now that we are transmitting data at an unprecedented amount, we will ultimately reach a limit. We also have to make communication more secure, and quantum information is good for that because of two security benefits: you can readily detect “eavesdropping”, and it is also impossible to copy quantum information. That’s bringing a unique and absolute level of security in that no malicious party can fool or intercept the data. To apply security, you have to understand the underlying principles.”
The quantum technology space is definitely exciting at the moment, recently China and Austria commenced quantum communication via satellite. IBM also has a quantum computer, available in the public cloud for people who want to program a quantum computer, “The challenge is now how do you scale it up”.
Dr. Romero concluded, “My research is foundational. Understanding how information works in the quantum world will allow us take advantage of quantum physics. It is important to understand it so we can use them for our future technologies. It will definitely be a technology of our future.”
