Nanotechnology Now

Our NanoNews Digest Sponsors
Heifer International



Home > Press > Quantum computing moves forward

A sil­i­con chip lev­i­tates indi­vid­ual atoms used in quan­tum infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing. Photo: Curt Suplee and Emily Edwards, Joint Quan­tum Insti­tute and Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land. Credit: Science.
A sil­i­con chip lev­i­tates indi­vid­ual atoms used in quan­tum infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing. Photo: Curt Suplee and Emily Edwards, Joint Quan­tum Insti­tute and Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land.

Credit: Science.

Abstract:
New tech­nolo­gies that exploit quan­tum behav­ior for com­put­ing and other appli­ca­tions are closer than ever to being real­ized due to recent advances, accord­ing to a review arti­cle pub­lished this week in the jour­nal Sci­ence.

Quantum computing moves forward

Princeton, NJ | Posted on March 9th, 2013

These advances could enable the cre­ation of immensely pow­er­ful com­put­ers as well as other appli­ca­tions, such as highly sen­si­tive detec­tors capa­ble of prob­ing bio­log­i­cal sys­tems. "We are really excited about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of new semi­con­duc­tor mate­ri­als and new exper­i­men­tal sys­tems that have become avail­able in the last decade," said Jason Petta, one of the authors of the report and an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of physics at Prince­ton University.

Petta co-authored the arti­cle with David Awschalom of the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, Lee Bas­set of the Uni­ver­sity of California-Santa Bar­bara, Andrew Dzu­rak of the Uni­ver­sity of New South Wales and Eve­lyn Hu of Har­vard University.

Two sig­nif­i­cant break­throughs are enabling this for­ward progress, Petta said in an inter­view. The first is the abil­ity to con­trol quan­tum units of infor­ma­tion, known as quan­tum bits, at room tem­per­a­ture. Until recently, tem­per­a­tures near absolute zero were required, but new diamond-based mate­ri­als allow spin qubits to be oper­ated on a table top, at room tem­per­a­ture. Diamond-based sen­sors could be used to image sin­gle mol­e­cules, as demon­strated ear­lier this year by Awschalom and researchers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity and IBM Research (Sci­ence, 2013).

The sec­ond big devel­op­ment is the abil­ity to con­trol these quan­tum bits, or qubits, for sev­eral sec­onds before they lapse into clas­si­cal behav­ior, a feat achieved by Dzurak's team (Nature, 2010) as well as Prince­ton researchers led by Stephen Lyon, pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing (Nature Mate­ri­als, 2012). The devel­op­ment of highly pure forms of sil­i­con, the same mate­r­ial used in today's clas­si­cal com­put­ers, has enabled researchers to con­trol a quan­tum mechan­i­cal prop­erty known as "spin". At Prince­ton, Lyon and his team demon­strated the con­trol of spin in bil­lions of elec­trons, a state known as coher­ence, for sev­eral sec­onds by using highly pure silicon-28.

Quantum-based tech­nolo­gies exploit the phys­i­cal rules that gov­ern very small par­ti­cles — such as atoms and elec­trons — rather than the clas­si­cal physics evi­dent in every­day life. New tech­nolo­gies based on "spin­tron­ics" rather than elec­tron charge, as is cur­rently used, would be much more pow­er­ful than cur­rent technologies.

In quantum-based sys­tems, the direc­tion of the spin (either up or down) serves as the basic unit of infor­ma­tion, which is anal­o­gous to the 0 or 1 bit in a clas­si­cal com­put­ing sys­tem. Unlike our clas­si­cal world, an elec­tron spin can assume both a 0 and 1 at the same time, a feat called entan­gle­ment, which greatly enhances the abil­ity to do computations.

A remain­ing chal­lenge is to find ways to trans­mit quan­tum infor­ma­tion over long dis­tances. Petta is explor­ing how to do this with col­lab­o­ra­tor Andrew Houck, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing at Prince­ton. Last fall in the jour­nal Nature, the team pub­lished a study demon­strat­ing the cou­pling of a spin qubit to a par­ti­cle of light, known as a pho­ton, which acts as a shut­tle for the quan­tum information.

Yet another remain­ing hur­dle is to scale up the num­ber of qubits from a hand­ful to hun­dreds, accord­ing to the researchers. Sin­gle quan­tum bits have been made using a vari­ety of mate­ri­als, includ­ing elec­tronic and nuclear spins, as well as superconductors.

Some of the most excit­ing appli­ca­tions are in new sens­ing and imag­ing tech­nolo­gies rather than in com­put­ing, said Petta. "Most peo­ple agree that build­ing a real quan­tum com­puter that can fac­tor large num­bers is still a long ways out," he said. "How­ever, there has been a change in the way we think about quan­tum mechan­ics - now we are think­ing about quantum-enabled tech­nolo­gies, such as using a spin qubit as a sen­si­tive mag­netic field detec­tor to probe bio­log­i­cal systems."

The research at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity was sup­ported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foun­da­tion, the David and Lucile Packard Foun­da­tion, US Army Research Office grant W911NF-08-1-0189, DARPA QuEST award HR0011-09-1-0007 and the US National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion through the Prince­ton Cen­ter for Com­plex Mate­ri­als (DMR-0819860) and CAREER award DMR-0846341

####

For more information, please click here

Contacts:
Catherine Zandonella

Copyright © Princeton University

If you have a comment, please Contact us.

Issuers of news releases, not 7th Wave, Inc. or Nanotechnology Now, are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.

Bookmark:
Delicious Digg Newsvine Google Yahoo Reddit Magnoliacom Furl Facebook

Related Links

Read the abstract.

Related News Press

News and information

INRS and ELI deepen strategic partnership to train the next generation in laser science:PhD students will benefit from international mobility and privileged access to cutting-edge infrastructure June 6th, 2025

Electrifying results shed light on graphene foam as a potential material for lab grown cartilage June 6th, 2025

Quantum computers simulate fundamental physics: shedding light on the building blocks of nature June 6th, 2025

A 1960s idea inspires NBI researchers to study hitherto inaccessible quantum states June 6th, 2025

Govt.-Legislation/Regulation/Funding/Policy

INRS and ELI deepen strategic partnership to train the next generation in laser science:PhD students will benefit from international mobility and privileged access to cutting-edge infrastructure June 6th, 2025

Electrifying results shed light on graphene foam as a potential material for lab grown cartilage June 6th, 2025

Institute for Nanoscience hosts annual proposal planning meeting May 16th, 2025

Rice researchers harness gravity to create low-cost device for rapid cell analysis February 28th, 2025

Chip Technology

A 1960s idea inspires NBI researchers to study hitherto inaccessible quantum states June 6th, 2025

Programmable electron-induced color router array May 14th, 2025

Enhancing power factor of p- and n-type single-walled carbon nanotubes April 25th, 2025

Ultrafast plasmon-enhanced magnetic bit switching at the nanoscale April 25th, 2025

Quantum Computing

Quantum computers simulate fundamental physics: shedding light on the building blocks of nature June 6th, 2025

Magnetism in new exotic material opens the way for robust quantum computers June 4th, 2025

A new study provides insights into cleaning up noise in quantum entanglement:When it comes to purifying quantum entanglement, new theoretical work highlights the importance of tailoring noise-minimizing solutions to specific quantum systems May 16th, 2025

Programmable electron-induced color router array May 14th, 2025

Sensors

Quantum sensors tested for next-generation particle physics experiments: New research shows that the specialized sensors can detect particles more precisely April 25th, 2025

Quantum engineers ‘squeeze’ laser frequency combs to make more sensitive gas sensors January 17th, 2025

UCF researcher discovers new technique for infrared “color” detection and imaging: The new specialized tunable detection and imaging technique for infrared photons surpasses present technology and may be a cost-effective method of capturing thermal imaging or night vision, medica December 13th, 2024

Nanotechnology: Flexible biosensors with modular design November 8th, 2024

Discoveries

Researchers unveil a groundbreaking clay-based solution to capture carbon dioxide and combat climate change June 6th, 2025

Cambridge chemists discover simple way to build bigger molecules – one carbon at a time June 6th, 2025

Electrifying results shed light on graphene foam as a potential material for lab grown cartilage June 6th, 2025

A 1960s idea inspires NBI researchers to study hitherto inaccessible quantum states June 6th, 2025

Announcements

INRS and ELI deepen strategic partnership to train the next generation in laser science:PhD students will benefit from international mobility and privileged access to cutting-edge infrastructure June 6th, 2025

Electrifying results shed light on graphene foam as a potential material for lab grown cartilage June 6th, 2025

Quantum computers simulate fundamental physics: shedding light on the building blocks of nature June 6th, 2025

A 1960s idea inspires NBI researchers to study hitherto inaccessible quantum states June 6th, 2025

Grants/Sponsored Research/Awards/Scholarships/Gifts/Contests/Honors/Records

Researchers uncover strong light-matter interactions in quantum spin liquids: Groundbreaking experiment supported by Rice researcher reveals new insights into a mysterious phase of quantum matter December 13th, 2024

New discovery aims to improve the design of microelectronic devices September 13th, 2024

Physicists unlock the secret of elusive quantum negative entanglement entropy using simple classical hardware August 16th, 2024

Atomic force microscopy in 3D July 5th, 2024

NanoNews-Digest
The latest news from around the world, FREE




  Premium Products
NanoNews-Custom
Only the news you want to read!
 Learn More
NanoStrategies
Full-service, expert consulting
 Learn More











ASP
Nanotechnology Now Featured Books




NNN

The Hunger Project