Algorithmic cooling is a novel technique to generate ensembles of highly polarized spins, which could significantly improve the signal strength in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. It combines reversible (entropy-preserving) manipulations and irreversible controlled interactions with the environment, using simple quantum computing techniques to increase spin polarization far beyond the Shannon entropy-conservation bound. Notably, thermalization is beneficially employed as an integral part of the cooling scheme, contrary to its ordinary destructive implications. We report the first cooling experiments bypassing Shannon's entropy-conservation bound, performed on a standard liquid-state NMR spectrometer. We believe that this experimental success could pave the way for the first near-future application of quantum computing devices.
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0511156,
title = {Experimental Heat-Bath Cooling of Spins},
author = {Gilles Brassard and Yuval Elias and Jose M. Fernandez and Haggai Gilboa and Jonathan A. Jones and Tal Mor and Yossi Weinstein and Li Xiao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0511156},
year = {2007}
}