Quantum dots could bridge gap between electronic and quantum
Source: Jon Gold
An intriguing type of quantum computing is one step closer to practicality with the announcement today that experts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Stanford University and the Technical University of Munich have managed to solve one of the technology’s major problems using common semiconductor materials.
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The idea behind quantum computing, in the broadest possible strokes, is to use the quantum state of a small particle to store information. The advantage is that each of these particles, called qubits, can store a large range of values, while the regular bits at the core of electronic computers can only represent zero or one. Consequently, the theory goes, certain kinds of computation could be performed at vastly superior speeds.
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The actual particles to be used as qubits vary �C some proposed quantum computers use photons, others ions or other atoms that can be manipulated to represent different values. But the announcement made today details a quantum computer that uses a lone electron enclosed in a nanostructure, called a quantum dot, made from standard semiconductor materials to store information in the form of the electron’s spin.
Previously, the use of the technique had been limited by what Technical University of Munich researcher Alexander Bechtold described in the announcement as a piezoelectric effect, which caused the spin state to fluctuate �C meaning that the information stored is corrupted in a matter of hundreds of nanoseconds.
The fix? Magnets, according to Bechtold. A magnetic field of 1.5 teslas apparently counteracts this loss of information.
“This corresponds to the magnetic field strength of a strong permanent magnet,” he said. “It stabilizes the nuclear spins and the encoded information remains intact.”
The Munich research group’s leader, Jonathan Finley, said that these semiconductor quantum dots are an “extremely promising” system, and that they have a particular, unique upside.
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