Computers May Be Blind to Hidden Order: IIITH Professor’s Research
Chakraborty’s team, collaborating with Soonwon Choi of MIT, Soumik Ghosh of the University of Chicago, and Tudor Giurgică-Tiron of the University of Maryland, constructed states using shallow, local quantum circuits with only a few layers.
Hyderabad: Future AI, secure banking systems and next-generation navigation tools may face hard limits, not because nature is chaotic, but because machines fail to detect hidden patterns. This concern stems from new research led by Prof. Shantanav Chakraborty of the International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad (IIIT-H). “There are situations where systems appear unpredictable simply because no realistic computer can see what’s actually there,” he says.
The study, published in Physical Review Letters, connects these limits to deep thermalisation, a phenomenon observed in modern quantum experiments. In such experiments, scientists measure a large portion of a many-particle system and study the remainder, which continues to behave as if it were fully random. “People assumed this comes from extreme chaos or very complicated processes,” Chakraborty says. “Our work shows that might not be necessary.”
Chakraborty’s team, collaborating with Soonwon Choi of MIT, Soumik Ghosh of the University of Chicago, and Tudor Giurgică-Tiron of the University of Maryland, constructed states using shallow, local quantum circuits with only a few layers. These circuits do not generate extensive mixing among particles. “And yet, under the same assumptions used in secure cryptography, even a powerful quantum computer cannot distinguish these states from truly random ones,” he says.
The researchers then replicated what experimental groups typically do: measure a large part of the system and condition the remaining portion on those outcomes. “The leftover still looked random in the precise sense that matters,” Chakraborty explains. “This shows the effect can arise from computational limits, not because nature must burn enormous complexity.”
He says the implications become clear when applied to real technologies. “Quantum devices are no longer science fiction. They include quantum key-distribution boxes used in banking security, precision sensors that detect tiny gravitational changes for mapping, and future quantum computers that companies hope to use for drug design and logistics,” he notes. “If such systems display behaviour that seems random, the mistake is assuming the universe is messy. Very often, the real limitation is our inability to detect the order behind it.”
