Tag: quantum computers

Uni speeds up quantum silicon chip

Posted on March 20, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-03-20 at 14.51.59A team of scientists at the University of Surrey claimed that they’d demonstrated the fastest ever quantum switch using a silicon chp.

The researchers said they demonstrated a quantum on/off switching time of about a millionth of a millionth of a second.

Dr Ellis Bowyer, a Surrey University scientists, said: “Quantum computing exploits the fact that according to quantum mechanics, atoms can exist in two states at once, being both excited and unexcited at the same time. This… is most famously illustrated by Schrodinger’s quantum cat which is simultaneously dead and alive.”

He said that silicon ofer a very clean environment for phosphorous atoms which are trapped inside where our quantum information is being stored. He said that the research put the atoms into a superposition state with a few trillionths of a second laser pulse and then created a new superposition which depends on the exact time at which a second laser pulse arrives.

He said that the team at the university has had extra funding from the YK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to see if it’s possible to connect these quantum objects to each other, to make bigger building blocks for quantum computers.

The next stage in research is to create fast quantum silicon chips.

Bowyer said: “The time is drawing nearer when we’ll be able to make a computer that does a tremendous number of calculations simultaneously, and that provides unprecedently secure computing, impenetrable to hackers.”

Scientists crystallise light

Posted on September 10, 2014 by - News

Princeton University crystallised lightPrinceton University scientists have locked together photos and created crystallised light.

The reason for the scientists doing this somewhat unusual thing is because they’re aiming at developing room temperature superconductors.

Hakan Tureci, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, said: “We are interested in exploring – and ultimately controlling and directing – the flow of energy at the atomic level. The goal is to better understand current materials and processes and to evaluate materials that we cannot yet create.”

The research could also lead to more efficient computers.  Current computers use classical mechanics. But, said the researchers: “The world of atoms and photons obeys the rules of quantum mechanics, which include a number of strange and very counterintuitive features. “

Building a quantum computer would allow many problems to be solved that can’t be using the mechanical model.  Building a quantum computer is, however, very difficult, the researchers said.

Tureci pointed out that sometimes light acts like a wave and other times a particle – a photon. “Here we set up a situation where light effectively behaves like a particle in the sense that two photons can interact very strongly,” he said. “In one mode of operation light sloshes back and forth like a liquid, in the other it freezes.”