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Category: computing – Page 6

China Built a Working CPU With Transistors Just 3 Atoms Thick

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Researchers develop a new way to build molecular ‘ladders’ for organic electronics

Ladder-type oligothiophenes are an important class of sulfur-containing π-conjugated molecules. Because their fused, ladder-like structures can support efficient electronic interactions, they are widely studied as core motifs for organic semiconductors, organic field-effect transistors, flexible electronics and related molecular materials.

In molecular electronics, however, simply connecting rings together is not enough. The electronic properties of these molecules depend strongly on how the thiophene rings are fused and how sulfur atoms are oriented along the molecular framework. Some arrangements produce highly conjugated systems, while others introduce cross-conjugated segments that can alter the band gap and molecular packing.

Although interest in such mixed conjugated/cross-conjugated molecular systems is growing, a general method for systematically constructing regioisomeric ladder-type oligothiophenes with precise control over thiophene ring orientation has not been well established.

Long-theorized electron-on-helium qubit achieves strong coupling to a single microwave photon

Quantum computers, devices that store and process information leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics, have been found to be promising for tackling some problems that cannot be solved by classical computers. Quantum computers store data in the form of qubits (i.e., quantum bits), units of information that can exist in combinations of different states, instead of being limited to a binary value (i.e., 0 or 1), like classical bits.

For decades, various theoretical physicists have been exploring the possibility of building a quantum computing system using electrons trapped above the surface of superfluid helium, a form of liquid helium cooled to extremely low temperatures. These trapped electrons could ultimately be more isolated from sources of noise (i.e., environmental disturbances) that can disrupt quantum states and lead to computational errors.

Researchers at EeroQ Corporation, a quantum computing company based in Chicago, recently introduced a strategy to enable strong interactions between a single electron floating above superfluid helium and a microwave photon.

Does time come from the entire universe running computations?

Explaining the passage of time has been a gnarly problem in physics basically forever, but physicist and computer scientist Stephen Wolfram has a radical proposal for where it comes from. He discussed his ideas on time – and what they mean for free will – with reporter Leah Crane

Magnetic octupole model captures domain-wall motion in noncollinear antiferromagnets

Researchers from The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed the first magnetic multipole-based micromagnetic model for antiferromagnets. Published in Applied Physics Reviews, their generalized framework provides a theoretical and computational foundation for designing future spintronic devices made with antiferromagnetic materials.

Unlike traditional electronics, which rely on an electron’s charge, spin electronics harnesses an electron’s magnetic orientation (spin). In recent years, materials science researchers have identified antiferromagnets as a promising material for future spintronic devices because of their ultrafast spin dynamics and stability under external magnetic fields.

But before these materials can be implemented in practical devices, researchers need robust models that decipher their complex, nonuniform movements. Although micromagnetic simulations have been widely used to study spin dynamics in ferromagnets, a comparable framework had yet to be fully established for antiferromagnets, whose spin structure is more difficult to control. However, some types of antiferromagnets—such as noncollinear antiferromagnets—have a unique rotating structure that is more easily manipulated.

Steering light in a flash: New chip redirects light beams in less than a trillionth of a second

Light can carry enormous amounts of information at extreme speeds, making photonic technologies promising for the development of faster communications, more powerful computing systems and more sensitive sensors. But for light to be useful for these purposes, engineers need to be able to control where it goes and redirect it quickly. A new device built by Caltech researchers uses a beam of light to steer another to a different angle in just 74 femtoseconds (74 quadrillionths of a second). That’s about the time it takes light to travel the width of a human hair.

“Steering light with light is very challenging because light typically interacts very weakly with matter. Using optical metasurfaces (ultrathin carefully nanoengineered sheets), we can up the interaction strength to make this possible with much higher efficiency,” says Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science and the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech.

The team describes the work in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The paper’s lead author, Claudio Hail, completed the work as a postdoctoral scholar in Atwater’s lab at Caltech and is now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley.

University of Chicago Confirmed Quantum Reach Its Transistor Moment?—Classical Computing Is Now 1947

Researchers at University of Chicago continue to make significant contributions to quantum science, helping advance quantum computing, quantum networking, and quantum materials. Headlines claiming that quantum computing has reached its \.

Optical writing of antiferromagnets points toward new storage devices and energy efficient information systems

A German-Japanese research team involving the University of Augsburg has made a significant breakthrough in the use of antiferromagnets. For the first time, the team has succeeded in writing magnetic information using only ultrashort laser pulses—without the need for electric currents or magnetic fields.

Antiferromagnetic materials are considered promising for the next generation of data storage devices because they react particularly quickly and are insensitive to external disturbances. Until now, however, their application has been limited because their magnetic states are difficult to control precisely.

The research team led by experimental physicist Prof. Dr. István Kézsmárki has now developed a new method in which it is not the polarization of the light, but its direction of propagation (“pulse”), that is used for control. Through targeted irradiation, it is possible to switch between different magnetic states and write information. Furthermore, this information can also be read out using purely optical means. The paper is published in the journal Nature Materials.

Quantum computing: Laser-optical system offers full control over 2,000 trapped Rydberg atoms

Fraunhofer ILT in Aachen has developed a highly complex laser-optical system for a quantum computer currently under construction at the 5th Institute of Physics at the University of Stuttgart. This system enables 2,000 Rydberg atoms to be positioned with submicrometer precision in the computer’s highly compact vacuum chamber. To do this, the system projects an array of 2,000 individually controllable laser beams into the chamber. These beams act as optical tweezers and hold the trapped Rydberg atoms precisely at the distance required for them to interact with each other. The computer’s quantum logic processes are based on these interactions.

The task was formidable: to develop a system capable of controlling 2,000 trapped strontium atoms using optical tweezers and positioning them with an accuracy of less than 100 nanometers (nm) within the vacuum chamber of a Rydberg quantum computer. The vacuum chamber is the computer’s processing unit, where two adjacent atoms are brought into a state through laser excitation in which they interact with one another. These interactions can be controlled and measured. Scientists refer to them as two-qubit logic gates; they are the building blocks of quantum logic in a Rydberg quantum computer.

Rydberg atoms are particularly well suited for quantum computing. In their laser-excited state, they are more than one micrometer (µm) in size because, as a result of the excitation, their outermost electron briefly moves to an orbital far from the atomic nucleus, where it nevertheless remains bound. However, due to the weak binding of the outer electron, the atoms are highly sensitive to electric fields, which can also originate from neighboring atoms. Scientists are leveraging this property for the highly precise electromagnetic control of quantum operations.

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