experimental long lived entanglement of two macroscopic objects

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Experimental long-lived entanglement of two macroscopic objects

Affiliation.

• 1 Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, Denmark.
• PMID: 11574882
• DOI: 10.1038/35096524

Entanglement is considered to be one of the most profound features of quantum mechanics. An entangled state of a system consisting of two subsystems cannot be described as a product of the quantum states of the two subsystems. In this sense, the entangled system is considered inseparable and non-local. It is generally believed that entanglement is usually manifest in systems consisting of a small number of microscopic particles. Here we demonstrate experimentally the entanglement of two macroscopic objects, each consisting of a caesium gas sample containing about 1012 atoms. Entanglement is generated via interaction of the samples with a pulse of light, which performs a non-local Bell measurement on the collective spins of the samples. The entangled spin-state can be maintained for 0.5 milliseconds. Besides being of fundamental interest, we expect the robust and long-lived entanglement of material objects demonstrated here to be useful in quantum information processing, including teleportation of quantum states of matter and quantum memory.

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• DOI: 10.1038/35096524
• Corpus ID: 4343736

Experimental long-lived entanglement of two macroscopic objects

• B. Julsgaard , A. Kozhekin , E. Polzik
• Published in Nature 9 June 2001

896 Citations

Stabilized entanglement of massive mechanical oscillators, entanglement between distant macroscopic mechanical and spin systems, entangled mechanical oscillators, tomography of entangled macroscopic mechanical objects, entanglement and non-locality in a micro-macroscopic system, entanglement between two spatially separated atomic modes, quantum manipulation of ultracold atoms and photons, entanglement between more than two hundred macroscopic atomic ensembles in a solid, heralded entanglement between widely separated atoms, macroscopic bell state between a millimeter-sized spin system and a superconducting qubit, 25 references, experimental entanglement of four particles, step-by-step engineered multiparticle entanglement, experimental realization of teleporting an unknown pure quantum state via dual classical and einstein-podolsky-rosen channels, can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete.

• Highly Influential

Experimental quantum teleportation

Unconditional quantum teleportation, quantum communication between atomic ensembles using coherent light., atomic quantum state teleportation and swapping., spin squeezing and reduced quantum noise in spectroscopy., dense coding in experimental quantum communication., related papers.

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Experimental long-lived entanglement of two macroscopic objects

• October 2001
• Nature 413(6854):400-3
• 413(6854):400-3
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• University of Copenhagen

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Experimental long-lived entanglement of two macroscopic objects

• Julsgaard, Brian
• Kozhekin, Alexander
• Polzik, Eugene S.

Entanglement is considered to be one of the most profound features of quantum mechanics. An entangled state of a system consisting of two subsystems cannot be described as a product of the quantum states of the two subsystems. In this sense, the entangled system is considered inseparable and non-local. It is generally believed that entanglement is usually manifest in systems consisting of a small number of microscopic particles. Here we demonstrate experimentally the entanglement of two macroscopic objects, each consisting of a caesium gas sample containing about 10 12 atoms. Entanglement is generated via interaction of the samples with a pulse of light, which performs a non-local Bell measurement on the collective spins of the samples. The entangled spin-state can be maintained for 0.5 milliseconds. Besides being of fundamental interest, we expect the robust and long-lived entanglement of material objects demonstrated here to be useful in quantum information processing, including teleportation of quantum states of matter and quantum memory.

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Experimental long-lived entanglement of two macroscopic objects

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Physical Review Letters

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Long-Lived Entanglement Generation of Nuclear Spins Using Coherent Light

Or katz, roy shaham, eugene s. polzik, and ofer firstenberg, phys. rev. lett. 124 , 043602 – published 29 january 2020.

• Citing Articles (31)
• Supplemental Material
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Nuclear spins of noble-gas atoms are exceptionally isolated from the environment and can maintain their quantum properties for hours at room temperature. Here we develop a mechanism for entangling two such distant macroscopic ensembles by using coherent light input. The interaction between the light and the noble-gas spins in each ensemble is mediated by spin-exchange collisions with alkali-metal spins, which are only virtually excited. The relevant conditions for experimental realizations with He 3 or Xe 129 are outlined.

• Received 24 June 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.043602

© 2020 American Physical Society

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• Research Areas
• Physical Systems

Authors & Affiliations

• 1 Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
• 2 Rafael Ltd, IL-31021 Haifa, Israel
• 3 Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
• * [email protected]

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Vol. 124, Iss. 4 — 31 January 2020

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Entanglement generation of the macroscopic spin-state of two distant noble-gas ensembles. (a) The physical system consists of two cells with mixtures of alkali (green) and noble-gas atoms (red). Homodyne detection of coherent probe light passing through the two cells monitors the correlated spin precession of the noble-gas ensembles. (b) Collective spin states of polarized alkali and noble-gas atoms. The shaded disks denote quantum spin fluctuations. (c) Polarization state of linearly polarized probe, and its rotation via indirect Faraday interaction with the noble-gas spins, as described by Eq. ( 6 ). The in-phase ( x ^ L y ) and out-of-phase ( x ^ L z ) components of the probe commute and can be simultaneously measured. Shaded purple disks denote the photon shot noise.

Sequence for generation and storage of entanglement. (a) The noble-gas ensembles are pumped to coherent spin states with vacuum fluctuations of radius std ( k ^ 1 y − k ^ 2 y ) = std ( k ^ 1 z − k ^ 2 z ) = 1 . Dashed circles mark the entanglement criterion from Eq. ( 1 ). (b) Homodyne detection of the probe light, via the Faraday interaction [Fig.  1 ], leads to (conditional) squeezing and displacement of the spin-state. k ^ 1 y − k ^ 2 y and k ^ 1 z − k ^ 2 z commute, and their combined uncertainty can be smaller than 1. (c) A short transverse magnetic-field pulse rotates the spin state, yielding an unconditioned entanglement, satisfying inequality ( 1 ). (d) During the memory time, application of a large magnetic-field decouples the noble-gas and alkali spins. The memory lifetime is governed by the long coherence time of the noble-gas spins.

Attainable degree of two-mode spin squeezing for noble-gas ensembles. We present results for both η = 0.22 and η = 0.12 , where η characterizes the fractional decoherence of the noble-gas spins during the entangling process. The parameters σ a , σ b , and σ L denote the contributions of the alkali spin-projection noise, noble-gas spin-projection noise, and photon shot noise, respectively, to the optical measurements. The squeezing is maximized when the noble-gas noise σ b dominates the measurement. The calculations are done using Eq. ( 7 ), with σ b / σ m L = κ 1 − ε and σ a / σ b = ϱ . The crosses mark proposed working points with Xe 129 − Rb 87 (green) and He 3 -K (red, orange).

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Quantum entanglement of two macroscopic objects is the Physics World 2021 Breakthrough of the Year

The Physics World  2021 Breakthrough of the Year goes to two independent teams for entangling two macroscopic vibrating drumheads, thereby advancing our understanding of the divide between quantum and classical systems. The winners are Mika Sillanpää  and colleagues at Aalto University, Finland and the University of New South Wales, Australia, together with a team led by  John Teufel  and  Shlomi Kotler  of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Nine other achievements are highly commended in our Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2021 .

Quantum technology has made great strides over the past two decades and physicists are now able to construct and manipulate systems that were once in the realm of thought experiments.  One particularly fascinating avenue of inquiry is the fuzzy border between quantum and classical physics. In the past, a clear delineation could be made in terms of size: tiny objects such as photons and electrons inhabit the quantum world whereas large objects such as billiard balls obey classical physics.

Over the past decade, physicists have been pushing the limits of what is quantum using drum-like mechanical resonators measuring around 10 microns across. Unlike electrons or photons, these drumheads are macroscopic objects that are manufactured using standard micromachining techniques and appear as solid as billiard balls in electron microscope images (see figure). Yet despite the resonators’ tangible nature, researchers have been able to observe their quantum properties, for example, by putting a device into its quantum ground state as Teufel and colleagues did in 2017.

This year, teams led by Teufel and Kotler and independently by Sillanpää went a step further, becoming the first to quantum-mechanically entangle two such drumheads . The two groups generated their entanglement in different ways. While the Aalto/Canberra team used a specially chosen resonant frequency to eliminate noise in the system that could have disturbed the entangled state, the NIST group’s entanglement resembled a two-qubit gate in which the form of the entangled state depends on the initial states of the drumheads.

Both teams overcame significant experimental challenges, and their considerable efforts could open the door for entangled resonators to be used as quantum sensors or as nodes in quantum networks. As a result, this work deserves its place as the first quantum-related Breakthrough of the Year since 2015 .

Selection criteria

The Breakthrough of the Year and the nine runners-up are selected by five  Physics World  editors from a list of nearly 600 research updates published on the website this year. In addition to having been reported in  Physics World  in 2021, our selections must meet the following criteria:

• Significant advance in knowledge or understanding
• Importance of work for scientific progress and/or development of real-world applications
• Of general interest to  Physics World  readers

Here are the nine runners-up that make up the rest of the Physics World Top 10 Breakthroughs for 2021. You can listen to our editors talk about the Top Ten in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast .

Restoring speech in a paralysed man

To Edward Chang , David Moses , Sean Metzger , Jessie Liu and colleagues at the University of California San Francisco for developing a speech neuroprosthesis that enabled a man with severe paralysis to communicate in sentences, by translating his brain signals directly into words on a screen. To achieve this, the team used a high-density electrode array implanted on the surface of the participant’s brain to record electrical activity in multiple cortical regions involved in speech formulation. Based on a 50-word vocabulary that the system could identify from patterns in recorded cortical activity, he was able to produce hundreds of short sentences. The technique showed a promising median decoding rate of 15.2 words per minute – around three times faster than the computer-based typing interface that he normally used for communication.

Making 30 lasers emit as one

To  Sebastian Klembt  of the  University of Würzburg , Germany,  Mordechai Segev of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and colleagues for creating an array of 30 vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) that behave as a single coherent light source, paving the way for large-scale, high-power applications. The team drew on principles of topological photonics to ensure that light from each laser in the array flows through all the others, forcing them to emit at the same frequency. The new design overcomes the power limitations of a previous device built by Segev and collaborators in 2018, and can in principle be scaled up to incorporate hundreds of individual lasers.

Quantifying wave–particle duality

To Tai Hyun Yoon and Minhaeng Cho of the Institute for Basic Science, South Korea; Xiaofeng Qian of the Stevens Institute of Technology, US; and Girish Agarwal of Texas A&M University, US for experimental and theoretical work quantifying the “wave-ness” and “particle-ness” of a photon and demonstrating that both properties are related to the purity of the photon source. In their experiment, Yoon and Cho tightly controlled the quantum state of pairs of photons – a “signal” and an “idler” – emitted by two crystals of lithium niobate. By independently altering the chances that each crystal would emit photons, they showed that this so-called source purity is related to the visibility of interference fringes (a wave-like property) and path distinguishability (a particle-like property) by a simple mathematical expression first articulated by Qian and Agarwal in 2020. The result has applications in quantum information and puts a new twist on interpretations of complementarity – the idea, originating from the 20th-century quantum pioneer Niels Bohr, that quantum objects sometimes behave like waves, and sometimes like particles.

Milestone for laser fusion

To  Omar Hurricane , Annie Kritcher , Alex Zylstra , Debbie Callahan and colleagues at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California, US, for taking a step closer to their ultimate goal of realizing “ignition”. Since NIF was turned on over a decade ago, its long-term goal has been to show it can achieve ignition – the point at which fusion reactions generate at least as much energy as its lasers put in. This involves self-sustaining reactions, in which the alpha particles that are also emitted during fusion emit heat to initiate further fusion. NIF, which is operated by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , trains 192 pulsed laser beams on to the inner surface of a centimetre-long hollow metal cylinder known as a hohlraum. Inside is a fuel capsule, which is a roughly 2 mm-diameter hollow sphere containing a thin deuterium-tritium layer. Experiments between 2009 and 2012 fell well short of reaching ignition and so researchers went back to the drawing board to make improvements. That paid off spectacularly on 8 August when researchers achieved an energy yield of more than 1.3 MJ – about 70% of the energy that the laser pulse delivered to the sample. Although still short of break-even, the figure far exceeded previous markers of around 0.1 MJ and some experts have described the result as the most significant advance in inertial fusion since it began in 1972.

Innovative particle cooling techniques

To researchers from the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus ( ALPHA ) and the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment ( BASE ) collaborations at CERN, for two separate studies presenting new ways to cool particles and antiparticles. The techniques could pave the way for precision studies examining the matter–antimatter asymmetry in the universe. The ALPHA collaboration demonstrated laser-cooling of antihydrogen atoms for the first time. To achieve this, the physicists developed a new type of laser, which produces 121.6 nm laser pulses, to cool the antiatoms. They then measured a key electronic transition in antihydrogen with unprecedented precision, a breakthrough that could lead to improved tests of other key properties of antimatter. The BASE researchers, meanwhile, showed how to extract heat from a single proton via a superconducting circuit connected to a cloud of laser-cooled ions several centimetres away – a technique, they say, that could easily be applied to antiprotons.

Observing a black hole’s magnetic field

To the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHT) for creating the first image showing the polarization of light in the region surrounding a supermassive black hole. The polarization reveals the presence of strong magnetic fields in an area where matter is accelerating into M87*, a black hole more than six billion times the mass of the Sun. Further study of this polarization could provide important insights into how some black holes create huge jets that eject matter and radiation into surrounding space. In 2019 the EHT made history by capturing the first image of the shadow of a black hole , and the collaboration was awarded the Physics World 2019 Breakthrough of the Year for that work.

Achieving coherent quantum control of nuclei

To Jörg Evers and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron – both in Germany – and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France, for being the first to achieve the coherent quantum control of nuclear excitations. The team used X-ray light from a synchrotron that was delivered to the nuclei in two ultrashort pulses. By adjusting the phase of the pulses, the team could toggle iron nuclei between coherent enhanced excitation and coherent enhanced emission. As well as providing a better understanding of quantum matter, the work could hasten the development of new technologies such as ultra-precise nuclear clocks and batteries that can store huge amounts of energy.

Observing Pauli blocking in ultracold fermionic gases

To Christian Sanner and colleagues at JILA in the US;  Amita Deb  and  Niels Kjærgaard  at the University of Otago; and Wolfgang Ketterle and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, for independently observing Pauli blocking in ultracold gases of fermionic atoms. Pauli blocking occurs in such gases because the constituent atoms fill nearly all available low-energy quantum states, which prevents atoms from making small transitions to neighbouring states. This affects how light scatters from atoms in the gas, and all three teams observed that Pauli blocking increased the transparency of their gases as they were cooled. The effect could someday be used to improve technologies based on ultracold atoms such as optical clocks and quantum repeaters.

Confirming the muon’s theory-defying magnetism

To the Muon g–2 collaboration for providing further evidence that the measured value of the muon’s magnetic moment disagrees with theoretical predictions. The international team circulated a beam of magnetically polarized muons in a storage ring at Fermilab in the US. The magnetic moments of the muons were rotated by a magnetic field and the rotation rate gave the size of the muon’s magnetic moment. The discrepancy between theory and experiment was first revealed two decades ago at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Now the combined Fermilab/Brookhaven results put the difference between experiment and theory at 4.2σ, which is less than the 5σ required for a discovery. If the discrepancy stands the test of future experiments, it could point to new physics beyond the Standard Model.

• Additional reporting by Michael Banks , Tami Freeman and Margaret Harris . There is more about this year’s shortlist in the Physics World Weekly podcast where we have a lively discussion about all of the entries.

Physics World‘s Breakthrough of the Year coverage is supported by Bluefors , a leading supplier of cryogen-free dilution refrigerator measurement systems with a strong focus on the quantum computing and information community. Our aim is to deliver the most reliable and easy to operate systems on the market which are of the highest possible quality.

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Quantum Entanglement Has Now Been Directly Observed at The Macroscopic Scale

Quantum entanglement is the binding together of two particles or objects, even though they may be far apart – their respective properties are linked in a way that's not possible under the rules of classical physics.

It's a weird phenomenon that Einstein described as " spooky action at a distance ", but its weirdness is what makes it so fascinating to scientists. In a 2021 study , quantum entanglement was directly observed and recorded at the macroscopic scale – a scale much bigger than the subatomic particles normally associated with entanglement.

The dimensions involved are still very small from our perspective – the experiments involved two tiny aluminum drums one-fifth the width of a human hair – but in the realm of quantum physics they're absolutely huge.

"If you analyze the position and momentum data for the two drums independently, they each simply look hot," said physicist John Teufel , from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US, last year.

"But looking at them together, we can see that what looks like random motion of one drum is highly correlated with the other, in a way that is only possible through quantum entanglement ."

While there's nothing to say that quantum entanglement can't happen with macroscopic objects, before this it was thought that the effects weren't noticeable at larger scales – or perhaps that the macroscopic scale was governed by another set of rules.

The recent research suggests that's not the case. In fact, the same quantum rules apply here, too, and can actually be seen as well. Researchers vibrated the tiny drum membranes using microwave photons and kept them kept in a synchronized state in terms of their position and velocities.

To prevent outside interference, a common problem with quantum states, the drums were cooled, entangled, and measured in separate stages while inside a cryogenically chilled enclosure. The states of the drums are then encoded in a reflected microwave field that works in a similar way to radar.

Previous studies had also reported on macroscopic quantum entanglement, but the 2021 research went further: All of the necessary measurements were recorded rather than inferred, and the entanglement was generated in a deterministic, non-random way.

In a related but separate series of experiments , researchers also working with macroscopic drums (or oscillators) in a state of quantum entanglement have shown how it's possible to measure the position and momentum of the two drumheads at the same time.

"In our work, the drumheads exhibit a collective quantum motion," said physicist Laure Mercier de Lepinay , from Aalto University in Finland. "The drums vibrate in an opposite phase to each other, such that when one of them is in an end position of the vibration cycle, the other is in the opposite position at the same time."

"In this situation, the quantum uncertainty of the drums' motion is canceled if the two drums are treated as one quantum-mechanical entity."

What makes this headline news is that it gets around Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle – the idea that position and momentum can't be perfectly measured at the same time. The principle states that recording either measurement will interfere with the other through a process called quantum back action .

As well as backing up the other study in demonstrating macroscopic quantum entanglement, this particular piece of research uses that entanglement to avoid quantum back action – essentially investigating the line between classical physics (where the Uncertainty Principle applies) and quantum physics (where it now doesn't appear to).

One of the potential future applications of both sets of findings is in quantum networks – being able to manipulate and entangle objects on a macroscopic scale so that they can power next-generation communication networks.

"Apart from practical applications, these experiments address how far into the macroscopic realm experiments can push the observation of distinctly quantum phenomena," write physicists Hoi-Kwan Lau and Aashish Clerk, who weren't involved in the studies, in a commentary on the research published at the time .

Both the first and the second study were published in Science .

A version of this article was first published in May 2021.

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• Published: 16 September 2024

Lake-centred sedentary lifestyle of early Tibetan Plateau Indigenous populations at high elevation 4,400 years ago

• Xiaoyan Yang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7191-4139 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Yu Gao 2   na1 ,
• Shargan Wangdue 3   na1 ,
• Jingkun Ran   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0009-1598-2696 2 , 4 , 5   na1 ,
• Qing Wang 2 , 5   na1 ,
• Songtao Chen 2 , 6   na1 ,
• Jishuai Yang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0598-207X 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Tianyi Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4790-7668 4 , 5   na1 ,
• Zhengquan Gu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5480-6697 2 ,
• Ying Zhang 2 , 6 ,
• Peng Cao 4 ,
• Qingyan Dai 4 ,
• Shungang Chen 2 , 5 ,
• Yan Tong 3 ,
• Nihanxue Jia 7 ,
• Qingli Sun 2 , 8 ,
• Yunzhe Huang 2 , 5 ,
• Linda Perry 9 ,
• Jade d’Alpoim Guedes 10 ,
• Xu Han 2 , 5 ,
• Feng Liu 4 ,
• Xiaotian Feng 4 ,
• Qi Yang 2 , 5 ,
• Yunming Wang 2 , 5 ,
• Shihua Hu 2 , 5 ,
• Yaofei Tian 1 ,
• Jianglong Guo 1 ,
• Xinwei Liang 2 , 5 ,
• Ting You 1 ,
• Yazhong Li 3 ,
• Yunan Zhang 2 , 7 ,
• Zhenhua Deng 7 ,
• Ling Qin 7 ,
• Xiaohong Wu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3819-0829 7 ,
• Yijie Zhuang 11 ,
• Yichen Liu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7187-6232 4 ,
• Qiaomei Fu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7141-0002 4 &
• Fahu Chen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8874-1035 1 , 2 , 5  

Nature Ecology & Evolution ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Archaeology
• Evolutionary genetics

The onset of sedentism on the Tibetan Plateau is often presumed to be associated with the dispersal of agriculture or farmers from archaeological sites located in the low elevation margins of the plateau. Previous studies of the plateau assumed that all foragers were probably mobile, but few systematic excavations at forager sites have been conducted to inform us about their settlement patterns. Here we report the world’s highest elevation sedentary way of living exhibited by the Mabu Co site at 4,446 metres above sea level, deep in the interior of the Tibetan Plateau 4,400–4,000 years ago. Our interdisciplinary study indicates that the site was occupied by Indigenous inhabitants of the plateau, representing the earliest known DNA evidence of foragers who predominantly harbour the southern plateau ancestry. The evidence shows that they had a sedentary lifestyle primarily supported by fishing at nearby lakes, supplemented by mammal and bird hunting, as well as small-scale exchanges of millet and rice crops.

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Key data used in this study are available in the main text, Extended Data Figs. 1 – 10 and the accompanying Supplementary Information . Other datasets generated in this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. The raw sequencing reads, aligned BAM files and the mitochondria FASTA files are available through the Genome Sequence Archive and the Genbase datasets ( https://bigd.big.ac.cn/gsa-human and https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/genbase ; accession no. PRJCA024667; https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa-human/s/LZ2QzlVY ; https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/genbase/review/4969bfb8c3f4 ). The pseudo-diploid genotype calls are available through the OMIX database, China National Center for Bioinformation/Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (accession no. OMIX006078 ; https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/omix/preview/g7zYGt1X ; https://share.cncb.ac.cn/9eac48fa9254 ). Ancient human and archaeological samples have been stored at the Tibetan Institute of the Preservation of Cultural Relics.

Code availability

The software used for the population genetics analysis (smartpca, f3, f4, qpAdm) was based on the ADMIXTOOLS ( https://github.com/DReichLab/AdmixTools ) and EIG ( https://github.com/DReichLab/EIG ) tools developed by the David Reich lab. All PAR files containing the parameters used in the analysis and the scripts used for plotting and table creation are available at https://github.com/RickRan/MabuCo .

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support of the National Cultural Heritage Administration and Tibetan Cultural Heritage Administration for our excavations in 2020–2023. We thank the villagers in Gala Town, Kangmar county, Tibet Autonomous Region, for their participation in the excavation of the Mabu Co site. We also thank H. Wang, Z. Ma, Z. Ling, X. Shen, Yongco, Y. Wang and Y. Lu for their help with the field surveys that led to the first discovery of the Mabu Co site, and B. Fitzhugh, H. Lu and D. Zhang for their helpful comments on this paper. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41930323 to X.Y. and grant no. 41988101 to F.C.), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (grant no. 2019QZKK0601 to F.C., X.Y., S.W. and Y.G.), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. 2022068 to Y.G.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41925009 to Q.F.), the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2021YFC1523600 to Q.F.) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. YSBR-019 to Q.F. and grant no. 2023000065 to Y.L.).

Author information

These authors contributed equally: Xiaoyan Yang, Yu Gao, Shargan Wangdue, Jingkun Ran, Qing Wang, Songtao Chen, Jishuai Yang, Tianyi Wang.

Authors and Affiliations

Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), Key Scientific Research Base of Bioarchaeology in Cold and Arid Regions (National Cultural Heritage Administration), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

Xiaoyan Yang, Jishuai Yang, Yaofei Tian, Jianglong Guo, Ting You & Fahu Chen

Group of Alpine Paleoecology and Human Adaptation (ALPHA), State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Xiaoyan Yang, Yu Gao, Jingkun Ran, Qing Wang, Songtao Chen, Jishuai Yang, Zhengquan Gu, Ying Zhang, Shungang Chen, Qingli Sun, Yunzhe Huang, Xu Han, Qi Yang, Yunming Wang, Shihua Hu, Xinwei Liang, Yunan Zhang & Fahu Chen

Tibetan Institute of the Preservation of Cultural Relics, Lhasa, China

Shargan Wangdue, Yan Tong & Yazhong Li

Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Jingkun Ran, Tianyi Wang, Peng Cao, Qingyan Dai, Feng Liu, Xiaotian Feng, Yichen Liu & Qiaomei Fu

University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Jingkun Ran, Qing Wang, Tianyi Wang, Shungang Chen, Yunzhe Huang, Xu Han, Qi Yang, Yunming Wang, Shihua Hu, Xinwei Liang & Fahu Chen

National Centre for Archaeology, Beijing, China

Songtao Chen & Ying Zhang

Key Laboratory of Archaeological Science (Ministry of Education), School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, Beijing, China

Nihanxue Jia, Yunan Zhang, Zhenhua Deng, Ling Qin & Xiaohong Wu

Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Hangzhou, China

The Foundation for Archaeobotanical Research in Microfossils, Fairfax, VA, USA

Linda Perry

Department, of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Jade d’Alpoim Guedes

Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK

Yijie Zhuang

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Contributions

F.C., X.Y. and S.W. designed the project. S.W., X.Y., Y.G. and Songtao Chen directed the excavation. Y. Tong., N.J., Q.W., Y. Li, J.Y., Ying Zhang, Q.Y., Y.W., Y.H., S.H., Y. Tian, J.G.J. X.L., T.Y., J.R., Z.D., L.Q. and Y. Zhuang participated in the excavation. Q.F., J.R., T.W. and Y.L. performed the human ancient DNA research. Ying Zhang and Q.W. performed the zooarchaeological research. Y.G. identified the archaeobotanical remains. Songtao Chen, Y.H. and J.Y. carried out the stable isotope analysis. Yunan Zhang, Y.G. and X.W. processed the dating samples. Z.G., Shungang Chen and Q.W. performed the animal ancient DNA analysis. X.Y., F.C., S.W., Y.G., J.Y., Q.F., J.R., T.W., Y. Liu, Songtao Chen, Ying Zhang and Q.W. analysed the data. J.Y., J.R. and Q.W. performed the data visualization. X.Y., Y.G., J.R., J.Y., Songtao Chen, L.P., J.D.G., Ying Zhang, Q.W., Y. Liu, Q.F. and F.C. wrote the paper with contributions from all authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiaoyan Yang , Shargan Wangdue , Yichen Liu , Qiaomei Fu or Fahu Chen .

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Extended data

Extended data fig. 1 aerial view of the mabu co site..

Plan view map of excavation units and burials referred in this study at the Mabu Co site.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Post molds and typical burial from the Mabu Co site.

a , Overhead view of the trench (TN32E25) where the post molds are located. b , Post molds. Yellow dotted circles outline the locations of post molds. Postholes were found in an irregular aligngment which may correspond to a living structure. While the upper portion of this living structure was not found, it is possible that this structure was finished using organic material such as animal hide that was reused and moved from place to place as is common in other areas of the world. c , Close-up view of post molds. d , Illustration image of the burial NM3. Grave of women about 25-year-old, southwest-northeast orientation. A unique, local mortuary practice. The typical stone coffin burial, characterized by stone walls surrounding the occupants who were placed in an extended prone position. The positioning of the heads and feet of the human remains on a flat stone with the head facing front.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Selected artifacts from the Mabu Co site.

a and b , Pottery sherds. The pottery styles point to a connection to the East. The shapes of the pottery objects and their characteristic decorative patterns with engraving, stamping, embossing, and stacking techniques are similar to contemporaneous pottery assemblages from the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau more than 1000 km from Mabu Co 81 , 82 . c , Stone axe. d , Crystal microliths. e , Bone bead. f , Bone needle. g , Fish gorge hooks.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Age of the Mabu Co site.

The calibrated dates have been produced using OxCal v.4.4. The colored shadows represent the 95.4% probability density distribution of the calibrated ages. The white circles and bar ranges indicate the modeled mean ages and age ranges, with 68.2% probability intervals.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Principal component analysis of East Asia populations.

PCA of ancient East Asian populations projected on present-day East Asia populations (including Tibetans).

Extended Data Fig. 6 ADMIXTURE displaying ancestry components.

ADMIXTURE results for selected surrounding populations for K=2 to K=12.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Multidimensional scaling (MDS) of ancient Tibetans populations based on the genetic relation f3-outgroup value.

Here, the south, central, and northeast subgroups of the plateau are primarily distinguished by blue, orange, and black. The Mabu Co population clustered with the ancient South-southwest population lineage, represented by the color blue, mainly including ancient Shannan, Nepal populations.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Pair-wised individuals f4 (Mbuti, X; Mabuco_ind, Mabuco_ind) for grouping Mabu Co ancient samples.

We used world-wide 30 outgroup (X) to test the differences between each pair individuals, and the sum of the number of outgroups with significant differences (|Z|>3) was shown in heatmap.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Genetic differences inside Mabuco groups by f4(Mbuti, X; MabucoE1, MabucoE2).

Certain degree of variation between MabucoE1 and MabucoE2 two groups is further verified, based on the degree of their connections with lowland East Asians (for example Qihe, Bianbian, DevilsCave_N), f4(Mbuti, X; MabucoE1, MabucoE2) < 0, where solid dots represent the |Z|>3, Z-scores are calculated with 5 cM jackknifing standard error (SE), and the horizontal lines mark ±3 SEs ranges.

Extended Data Fig. 10 Selected animal fossils from the Mabu Co site.

a , Schizothoracids ( Gymnocypris sp.). (1) Pharyngeal; (2) Cleithrum; (3) Basioccipital; (4) Vertebra I; (5) Vertebra II; (6) Other vertebrae. b , Red deer ( Cervus elaphus ) left metatarsal. c , Argali ( Ovis ammon ) right scapula. d , Lynx ( Lynx lynx ) left premaxilla and maxilla. e , Gazelle ( Procapra przewalskii ) right maxilla. f , Woolly hare ( Lepus oiostolus ) right mandible. g , Himalayan marmot ( Marmota himalayana ) left mandible. h , Pochard ( Netta spp. & Aythya spp.) left coracoid. i , Coot ( Fulica atra ) left coracoid. j , Great cormorant ( Phalacrocorax carbo ) right carpometacarpal. Scale bars, 2 cm.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information.

Supplementary text for the population genetics analysis, Figs. 1–3, Tables 1–12 and Data 1–7.

Reporting Summary

Peer review file, supplementary data.

Supplementary Data 1. f3 statistics showing the relationship of Mabu CoE1 and Mabu Co E2 to early ancient sourthern populations. Supplementary Data 2. Different patterns of f4 statistics showing the relationship of Mabu Co E1/Mabu Co E2 and Shanna3k/Lubrak. Supplementary Data 3. f4 statistics revealing no significant increase/decrease in deep lineage signals in Mabu Co compared to other ancient plateau populations. Supplementary Data 4. Previous qpAdm result for Deep + ancient Northern EastAsia model on Shannan3k and Lubrak (black) and non-fitting qpAdm models of Mabu Co (Blue). Supplementary Data 5. Raw data for the stable isotope measurements in Beta Analytic. Supplementary Data 6. Raw data for the stable isotope measurements in JoInRLESA, SDU. Supplementary Data 7. Raw data for the stable isotope measurements in ESIL, CAAS.

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Yang, X., Gao, Y., Wangdue, S. et al. Lake-centred sedentary lifestyle of early Tibetan Plateau Indigenous populations at high elevation 4,400 years ago. Nat Ecol Evol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02539-w

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Received : 06 February 2024

Accepted : 15 August 2024

Published : 16 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02539-w

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