Scientists in China have created the most complex 2D microprocessor yet, featuring nearly 6,000 transistors. The devices are made from molybdenum disulfide, a material just three atoms thick. #semiconductors
Category: computing – Page 10
Time crystals are a new form of matter that repeat through time without energy. This quantum breakthrough could revolutionize technology and computing forever.
A team of Rice University researchers has developed a new way to control light interactions using a specially engineered structure called a 3D photonic-crystal cavity. Their work, published in the journal Nature Communications, lays the foundation for technologies that could enable transformative advancements in quantum computing, quantum communication and other quantum-based technologies.
“Imagine standing in a room surrounded by mirrors,” said Fuyang Tay, an alumnus of Rice’s Applied Physics Graduate Program and first author of the study. “If you shine a flashlight inside, the light will bounce back and forth, reflecting endlessly. This is similar to how an optical cavity works—a tailored structure that traps light between reflective surfaces, allowing it to bounce around in specific patterns.”
These patterns with discrete frequencies are called cavity modes, and they can be used to enhance light-matter interactions, making them potentially useful in quantum information processing, developing high-precision lasers and sensors and building better photonic circuits and fiber-optic networks. Optical cavities can be difficult to build, so the most widely used ones have simpler, unidimensional structures.
Imagine the tiniest game of checkers in the world—one played by using lasers to precisely shuffle around ions across a very small grid.
That’s the idea behind a recent study published in the journal Physical Review Letters. A team of theoretical physicists from Colorado has designed a new type of quantum “game” that scientists can play on a real quantum computer—or a device that manipulates small objects, such as atoms, to perform calculations.
The researchers even tested their game out on one such device, the Quantinuum System Model H1 Quantum Computer developed by the company Quantinuum. The study is a collaboration between scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder and Quantinuum, which is based in Broomfield, Colorado.
Scientists at EPFL have made a breakthrough in designing arrays of resonators, the basic components that power quantum technologies. This innovation could create smaller, more precise quantum devices.
Qubits, or quantum bits, are mostly known for their role in quantum computing, but they are also used in analog quantum simulation, which uses one well-controlled quantum system to simulate another more complex one. An analog quantum simulator can be more efficient than a digital computer simulation, in the same way that it is simpler to use a wind tunnel to simulate the laws of aerodynamics instead of solving many complicated equations to predict airflow.
Key to both digital quantum computing and analog quantum simulation is the ability to shape the environment with which the qubits are interacting. One tool for doing this effectively is a coupled cavity array (CCA), tiny structures made of multiple microwave cavities arranged in a repeating pattern where each cavity can interact with its neighbors. These systems can give scientists new ways to design and control quantum systems.
The exponential miniaturization of electronic chips over time, described by Moore’s law, has played a key role in our digital age. However, the operating power of small electronic devices is significantly limited by the lack of advanced cooling technologies available.
Aiming to tackle this problem, a study published in Cell Reports Physical Science, led by researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, describes a significant increase in performance for the cooling of electronic chips.
The most promising modern methods for chip cooling involve using microchannels embedded directly into the chip itself. These channels allow water to flow through, efficiently absorbing and transferring heat away from the source.
The exotic quantum phase, predicted over half a century ago, could lead to advances in quantum computing, sensors and communication technology.
Billions of heat exchangers are in use around the world. These devices, whose purpose is to transfer heat between fluids, are ubiquitous across many commonplace applications: they appear in HVAC systems, refrigerators, cars, ships, aircraft, wastewater treatment facilities, cell phones, data centers, and petroleum refining operations, among many other settings.
