Imagine a safe gamma ray laser that could eradicate cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue. A University of Colorado Denver engineer is on the cusp of giving scientists a new tool that can help them turn sci-fi into reality.
Category: computing – Page 6
Microchip Provides Made-to-Order Photons
A 10-µm-wide microchip can generate light with any desired direction, polarization, and intensity, which will be handy for future quantum technologies.
Emerging technologies for quantum computing and cryptography require small components capable of emitting photons whose properties are precisely controlled. Researchers have been developing such components, and now a team has demonstrated a technique that provides control of direction, polarization, and intensity simultaneously [1]. Like previous experiments, the technique uses microscopic structures on a semiconductor surface to convert wave-like surface excitations to light waves. But the new demonstration uses shapes for these structures that allow more precise control over the outgoing light. The team expects the new technique to find wide use in efforts to build quantum technologies in miniature solid-state devices.
Solid-state miniaturization is one of the few realistic routes toward making quantum technologies practical, scalable, and easily manufacturable, says Fei Ding of the University of Southern Denmark. But there are not many good compact photon sources. “The technology really requires a compact and flexible solid-state photon source that gives us full control over how light is emitted—its direction, polarization, and spatial profile,” Ding says. “This is crucial for building scalable quantum and nanophotonic technologies, where single photons are used as the fundamental carriers of information.”
Scientists Discover Strange New Quantum Behavior in Superconducting Material
A research team has provided the first experimental proof that flat electronic bands in a kagome superconductor are active and directly shape electronic and magnetic behaviors.
Researchers from Rice University, working with international partners, have found the first clear evidence of active flat electronic bands within a kagome superconductor. The discovery marks an important step toward creating new strategies for designing quantum materials, including superconductors, topological insulators, and spin-based electronics, which could play a central role in advancing future electronics and computing.
The findings, published on August 14 in Nature Communications.
Quantum Materials Synthesis
It has been widely recognized that whoever controls the development of novel materials controls technologies that evolve from them. The science and technology of materials synthesis are at the heart of the discovery, design, and realization of novel quantum materials that underpin quantum technologies. From a fundamental point of view, there is a current lack of clear-cut material realizations of recently proposed quantum states that promise revolutionary advances in novel technologies, including quantum spin liquids, accessible topological superconductors, room-temperature superconductors, controllable anyonic states, etc. The current mismatch between theory and experiment strongly suggests that daunting materials challenges will hinder advances in the development of quantum technologies, such as realistic quantum computers in future decades. Indeed, despite advances in quantum information processing in recent decades, major materials challenges have significantly limited progress in quantum computing hardware platforms. It requires collaborative efforts beyond the field of quantum computing to tackle these materials challenges. There is a clear indication that existing synthesis techniques are inadequate. New synthesis technologies capable of producing new phases and structures are urgently needed.
The central theme of this Special Collection is to communicate recent developments, identify new research areas, and collectively address urgent materials challenges faced by the community of quantum materials synthesis. It will serve as a renewed effort to improve the technical infrastructure available to researchers who require highly controlled sample materials for the conduct of fundamental materials investigations. This Collection presents invited articles written by leading scientists in this community and covers quantum materials synthesis of a range of forms of materials, such as bulk single crystals, thin films/heterostructures, and two-dimensional materials.
Two quantum computers with 20 qubits manage to simulate information scrambling
Four RIKEN researchers have used two small quantum computers to simulate quantum information scrambling, an important quantum-information process. This achievement illustrates a potential application of future quantum computers. The results are published in Physical Review Research.
Still in their infancy, quantum computers are only just beginning to be used for applications. But they promise to revolutionize computing when they become a mature technology.
One possible application for quantum computers is simulating the scrambling of quantum information—a key phenomenon that involves the spread of information in quantum systems ranging from strange metals to black holes.
Trapped calcium ions entangled with photons form scalable nodes for quantum networks
Researchers at the University of Innsbruck have created a system in which individual qubits—stored in trapped calcium ions—are each entangled with separate photons. Demonstrating this method for a register of up to 10 qubits, the team has shown an easily scalable approach that opens new possibilities for linking quantum computers and quantum sensors.
