A team of physicists has successfully created superconducting properties in materials known for conducting electricity only at their edges, marking a potential leap forward in quantum computing technology.
This achievement, which has eluded researchers for over a decade, was made possible through meticulous control of the experimental conditions.
Quantum Breakthroughs
“The moment when we wrote down the terms of this equation and saw that it all clicked together, it felt pretty incredible,” Wordsworth said. “It’s a result that finally shows us how directly the quantum mechanics links to the bigger picture.”
In some ways, he said, the calculation helps us understand climate change better than any computer model. “It just seems to be a fundamentally important thing to be able to say in a field that we can show from basic principles where everything comes from.”
The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) has designed a new type of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment that could significantly reduce the cost to produce 7nm and smaller semiconductors, and thus revolutionize the chip manufacturing supply chain.
According to reports, the EUV equipment’s optical system is greatly simplified while power consumption is reduced by a factor of ten, raising the prospect of much cheaper advanced chip-making machines.
If so, it could mark the end of ASML’s monopoly on EUV lithography, which would have serious implications for semiconductor manufacturers, investors and governments.
Startup Riverlane helped continue what has been a strong year for venture funding in the quantum computing industry.
The U.K.-based firm — which specializes in quantum error correction technology — raised a $75 million Series C led by Planet First Partners. The round also includes participation from ETF Partners, EDBI, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, the National Security Strategic Investment Fund and Altair
The company’s tech helps quantum computers perform without succumbing to eventual errors. Such computers typically can only perform a few hundred quantum operations before failure.
In a collaboration with EPFL Lausanne, ETH Zurich and the University of Southern California researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have used X-rays to look inside a microchip with higher precision than ever before. The image resolution of 4 nanometers marks a new world record. The high-resolution three-dimensional images of the type they produced will enable advances in both information technology and the life sciences.
The researchers are reporting their findings in the current issue of the journal Nature (“High-performance 4 nm resolution X-ray tomography using burst ptychography”).
View inside a state-of-the-art computer chip. Their newly developed ptychographic technique allowed the researchers to map the three-dimensional structure of this engineering marvel. The picture shows the different layers that make up the microchip. The coarser structures can be seen at the top. The microchip becomes increasingly complex as you move down through the layers – making the connections there visible requires a resolution of just a few nanometers. (Image: Tomas Aidukas, Paul Scherrer Institute)
Samsung has unveiled the world’s thinnest LPDDR5X DRAM chips for smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The chip is just 0.65mm thin.
Elon Musk says his startup Neuralink has implanted a brain chip into a second patient and plans to perform another eight trials later this year.
Almost half the electrodes are working… for now.
Schöfbänker made use of a telescope having a 14-inch mirror and assorted gear capable of following satellites that keeps them automatically in the center of a field of view, finessing the equipment with a bit of input and corrections, he told Space.com.
“I make these images by taking a video during the flyover and then stacking (averaging out) and sharpening the best frames,” Schöfbänker said.
The two solar panels that can be seen at the end aren’t visible on any of the computer renderings available online, Schöfbänker advised. “I am not really sure if they are solar panels or some other features like an antenna or something of that nature.”
An answer to a decades-old question in the theory of quantum entanglement raises more questions about this quirky phenomenon.
Physicists have a long list of open problems they consider important for advancing the field of quantum information. Problem 5 asks whether a system can exist in its maximally entangled state in a realistic scenario, in which noise is present. Now Julio de Vicente at Carlos III University of Madrid has answered this fundamental quantum question with a definitive “no” [1]. De Vicente says that he hopes his work will “open a new research avenue within entanglement theory.”
From quantum sensors to quantum computers, many technologies require quantum mechanically entangled particles to operate. The properties of such particles are correlated in a way that would not be possible in classical physics. Ideally, for technology applications, these particles should be in the so-called maximally entangled state, one in which all possible measures of entanglement are maximized. Scientists predict that particles can exist in this state in the absence of experimental, environmental, and statistical noise. But it was unclear whether the particles could also exist in a maximally entangled state in real-world scenarios, where noise is unavoidable.
