‘Universal’ Programmable Quantum Processor Demontrated
NIST postdoctoral researcher David Hanneke at the laser table used to demonstrate the first universal programmable processor for a potential quantum computer. A pair of beryllium ions (charged atoms) that hold information in the processor are trapped inside the cylinder at the lower right. A colorized image of the two ions is displayed on the monitor in the background. (J. Burrus/NIST)
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated the first “universal” programmable quantum information processor able to run any program allowed by quantum mechanics—the rules governing the submicroscopic world—using two quantum bits (qubits) of information. The processor could be a module in a future quantum computer, which theoretically could solve some important problems that are intractable today.
The NIST demonstration, described in Nature Physics,* marks the first time any research group has moved beyond demonstrating individual tasks for a quantum processor—as done previously at NIST and elsewhere—to perform programmable processing, combining enough inputs and continuous steps to run any possible two-qubit program.
The NIST team also analyzed the quantum processor with the methods used in traditional computer science and electronics by creating a diagram of the processing circuit and mathematically determining the 15 different starting values and sequences of processing operations needed to run a given program. “This is the first time anyone has demonstrated a programmable quantum processor for more than one qubit,” says NIST postdoctoral researcher David Hanneke, first author of the paper. “It’s a step toward the big goal of doing calculations with lots and lots of qubits. The idea is you’d have lots of these processors, and you’d link them together.”
The NIST processor stores binary information (1s and 0s) in two beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms), which are held in an electromagnetic trap and manipulated with ultraviolet lasers. Two magnesium ions in the trap help cool the beryllium ions. (more…)
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Quantum Computer Chips Now One Step Closer to Reality
by Pam Frost Gorder
Paul Berger
In the quest for smaller, faster computer chips, researchers are increasingly turning to quantum mechanics — the exotic physics of the small.
The problem: the manufacturing techniques required to make quantum devices have been equally exotic.
That is, until now.
Researchers at Ohio State University have discovered a way to make quantum devices using technology common to the chip-making industry today.
This work might one day enable faster, low-power computer chips. It could also lead to high-resolution cameras for security and public safety, and cameras that provide clear vision through bad weather.
Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and professor of physics at Ohio State University, and his colleagues report their findings in an upcoming issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters.
The team fabricated a device called a tunneling diode using the most common chip-making technique, called chemical vapor deposition. (more…)
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Scientists Discover Quantum Fingerprints of Chaos
Professor Poul Jessen of the UA College of Optical Sciences runs an experiment that provides long-sought evidence that two very different worlds of quantum mechanics and classical chaos are connected. (Lori Stiles, University of Arizona)
Chaotic behavior is the rule, not the exception, in the world we experience through our senses, the world governed by the laws of classical physics.
Even tiny, easily overlooked events can completely change the behavior of a complex system, to the point where there is no apparent order to most natural systems we deal with in everyday life.
The weather is one familiar case, but other well-studied examples can be found in chemical reactions, population dynamics, neural networks and even the stock market.
Scientists who study “chaos” - which they define as extreme sensitivity to infinitesimally small tweaks in the initial conditions - have observed this kind of behavior only in the deterministic world described by classical physics.
Until now, no one has produced experimental evidence that chaos occurs in the quantum world, the world of photons, atoms, molecules and their building blocks.
This is a world ruled by uncertainty: An atom is both a particle and a wave, and it’s impossible to determine its position and velocity simultaneously. (more…)
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The World’s Smallest Incandescent Lamp
Chris Regan (above) and his team are using the tiny lamp to study physicist Max Planck's black-body radiation law.
In an effort to explore the boundary between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics — two fundamental yet seemingly incompatible theories of physics — a team from the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy has created the world’s smallest incandescent lamp.
The team, which is led by Chris Regan, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, and includes Yuwei Fan, Scott Singer and Ray Bergstrom, has published the results of their research May 5 in the online edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.
Thermodynamics, the crown jewel of 19th-century physics, concerns systems with many particles. Quantum mechanics, developed in the 20th century, works best when applied to just a few. The UCLA team is using their tiny lamp to study physicist Max Planck’s black-body radiation law, which was derived in 1900 using principles now understood to be native to both theories. (more…)
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Quantum Paradox Directly Observed — Called a Milestone in Quantum Mechanics
In quantum mechanics, a vanguard of physics where science often merges into philosophy, much of our understanding is based on conjecture and probabilities, but a group of researchers in Japan has moved one of the fundamental paradoxes in quantum mechanics into the lab for experimentation and observed some of the ’spooky action of quantum mechanics’ directly.
Hardy’s Paradox, the axiom that we cannot make inferences about past events that haven’t been directly observed while also acknowledging that the very act of observation affects the reality we seek to unearth, poses a conundrum that quantum physicists have sought to overcome for decades. How do you observe quantum mechanics, atomic and sub-atomic systems that are so small-scale they cannot be described in classical terms, when the act of looking at them changes them permanently? (more…)
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Long-Distance Teleportation Between Two Atoms Achieved
Courtesy JQI/University of Maryland
For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing.
Teleportation may be nature’s most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances.
Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance. That capability is necessary for workable quantum information systems because they will require memory storage at both the sending and receiving ends of the transmission. In the Jan. 23 issue of the journal Science, the scientists report that, by using their protocol, atom-to-atom teleported information can be recovered with perfect accuracy about 90 percent of the time – and that figure can be improved.
“Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale ‘quantum repeater’ that can network quantum memories over vast distances,” says group leader Christopher Monroe of the JQI and the University of Maryland department of physics. (more…)
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