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Category: quantum physics – Page 1,104

Quantum technologies to revolutionize 21st century

Is quantum technology the future of the 21st century? On the occasion of the 66th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, this is the key question to be explored today in a panel discussion with the Nobel Laureates Serge Haroche, Gerardus ‘t Hooft, William Phillips and David Wineland. In the following interview, Professor Rainer Blatt, internationally renowned quantum physicist, recipient of numerous honours, Council Member and Scientific Co-Chairman of the 66th Lindau Meeting, talks about what we can expect from the “second quantum revolution”.

Blatt has no doubt: are driving forward a technological revolution, the future impact of which is still unclear. Nothing stands in the way of these technologies becoming the engine of innovations in science, economics and society in the . Early laboratory prototypes have shown just how vast the potential of quantum technologies is. Specific applications are expected in the fields of metrology, computing and simulations. However, substantial funding is required to advance from the development stage.

Professor Blatt, the first quantum revolution laid the physical foundations for trailblazing developments such as computer chips, lasers, magnetic resonance imaging and modern communications technology. In the Quantum Manifest published in mid-May, researchers now talk about the advent of a second quantum revolution. What exactly does this mean?

This second quantum revolution, as it is sometimes called, takes advantage of the phenomenon of entanglement. It’s a natural phenomenon that basic researchers recognized as early as the 1930s. Until now, all the technologies you mentioned derive their utility from the wave property upon which quantum physics is based. In the quantum world, its associated phenomena are often discussed in the context of wave-particle duality. Though they are not recognized as such, quantum technologies are therefore already available, and without them, many of our instruments would not be possible. By contrast, the nature of entanglement, which has been known for 85 years, has only been experimentally investigated in the past four decades based on findings by John Bell in the 1960s. Today, entanglement forms the basis for many new potential applications such as quantum communications, quantum metrology and quantum computing.

Rising Applications of Quantum Dots in Healthcare Industry to Drive Global Quantum Dots Market

Q-Dot demand in Healthcare is predicted to be high.

http://embedded-computing.com/news/rising-quantum-dots-market/#

Quantum Dots Market is driven by increasing demand for energy efficient displays and lighting solutions, North America accounted for largest quantum dots market share, use of quantum dots in solar cells and VLSI design is expected to open new possibilities for quantum dots market.

Quantum dots are semiconducting nanoparticles that range from 1nm to 10nm diameter in size and demonstrate quantum mechanical properties. The peculiarity of quantum dots is that they have ability to unite their semiconductor properties with those of nanomaterials. In addition, tunable nanocrystal size and superior optical properties have made quantum dots attractive semiconducting material for variety of applications in the field of healthcare, optoelectronics, solar energy, and security among others.

Will quantum computing be BlackBerry’s Waterloo?

Definitely could see QC being Blackberry’s achilles heal.

WATERLOO — Advances in quantum computing could present a huge challenge to BlackBerry’s biggest competitive advantage — its vaunted security software that has never been hacked.

This seldom talked-about subject was raised recently by John Thompson, the associate vice-president for research at the University of Waterloo. Thompson was listening to a presentation by Mike Wilson, a senior vice-president and chief evangelist for BlackBerry, at a medical technology conference in Kitchener about a month ago.

Both quantum computing and BlackBerry have deep roots in Waterloo. BlackBerry pioneered the smartphone industry and the wireless Internet from its suburban office parks in Waterloo.

Atomic-scale simulations predict how to use nanoparticles to increase hydrogen production

Awesome!

What if industrial waste water could become fuel? With affordable, long-lasting catalysts, water could be split to produce hydrogen that could be used to power fuel cells or combustion engines.

By conducting complex simulations, scientists showed that adding lithium to aluminum nanoparticles results in orders-of-magnitude faster water-splitting reactions and higher hydrogen production rates compared to pure aluminum nanoparticles. The lithium allowed all the aluminum atoms to react, which increased yields (Nano Letters, “Hydrogen-on-demand using metallic alloy nanoparticles in water”).

quantum molecular dynamics simulation of the production of hydrogen molecules

A snapshot from a large quantum molecular dynamics simulation of the production of hydrogen molecules (green) from an aluminum-lithium alloy nanoparticle containing 16,661 atoms (represented by the silver contour of charge density) and dissolved charged lithium atoms (red). For clarity, the water molecules were removed from the snapshot. Simulations were carried out at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility.

No need in supercomputers

Great that they didn’t have to use a super computer to do their prescribed, lab controlled experiments. However, to limit QC to a super computer and experimental computations only is a big mistake; I cannot stress this enough. QC is a new digital infrastructure that changes our communications, cyber security, and will eventually (in the years to come) provide consumers/ businesses/ and governments with the performance they will need for AI, Biocomputing, and Singularity.

A group of physicists from the Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, the Lomonosov Moscow State University, has learned to use personal computer for calculations of complex equations of quantum mechanics, usually solved with help of supercomputers. This PC does the job much faster. An article about the results of the work has been published in the journal Computer Physics Communications.

Senior researchers Vladimir Pomerantcev and Olga Rubtsova, working under the guidance of Professor Vladimir Kukulin (SINP MSU) were able to use on an ordinary desktop PC with GPU to solve complicated integral equations of quantum mechanics — previously solved only with the powerful, expensive supercomputers. According to Vladimir Kukulin, personal computer does the job much faster: in 15 minutes it is doing the work requiring normally 2–3 days of the supercomputer time.

The equations in question were formulated in the 60s by the Russian mathematician Ludwig Faddeev. The equations describe the scattering of a few quantum particles, i.e., represent a quantum mechanical analog of the Newtonian theory of the three body systems. As the result, the whole field of quantum mechanics called “physics of few-body systems” appeared soon after this.

New, better way to build circuits for world’s first useful quantum computers

We’re on a roll with QC.

The era of quantum computers is one step closer as a result of research published in the current issue of the journal Science. The research team has devised and demonstrated a new way to pack a lot more quantum computing power into a much smaller space and with much greater control than ever before. The research advance, using a 3-dimensional array of atoms in quantum states called quantum bits—or qubits—was made by David S. Weiss, professor of physics at Penn State University, and three students on his lab team. He said “Our result is one of the many important developments that still are needed on the way to achieving quantum computers that will be useful for doing computations that are impossible to do today, with applications in cryptography for electronic data security and other computing-intensive fields.”

The new technique uses both laser light and microwaves to precisely control the switching of selected individual qubits from one quantum state to another without altering the states of the other atoms in the cubic array. The new technique demonstrates the potential use of atoms as the building blocks of circuits in future quantum computers.

The scientists invented an innovative way to arrange and precisely control the qubits, which are necessary for doing calculations in a quantum computer. “Our paper demonstrates that this novel approach is a precise, accurate, and efficient way to control large ensembles of qubits for quantum computing,” Weiss said.

How The Majorana Fermion Is Going To Change The World

We now have a way to do tracibility in QC.

Shutterstock.

Chinese scientists won a major victory recently, by proving that the Majorana fermion — a particle we’ve found tantalizing hints of for years — genuinely exists. This discovery has huge implications for quantum computing, and it might change the world. But how?

A Majorana fermion is weird even by the standards of quantum physics. If you remember your high school physics, you remember that atomic particles like protons and electrons have a charge, positive or negative. The Majorana fermion, however, doesn’t have a charge, which allows it to be matter and anti-matter at the same time. Yes, that is incredibly confusing, even to quantum physicists, and they’re still arguing over how that even works.

Quantum Computing: A Primer

This video is worthless. I hear a person who is out of touch with the QC work and isn’t even aware all of the work going on. Frankly, QC is being worked on by big tech (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, D-Wave, IBM), governmental labs and incubators, limited set of start ups who are also (in many cases tied to big tech), and university research labs. Therefore, I don’t really find this soapbox video that informative as well as not in touch with where QC is today. It appears to me that this guy has sour grapes over not being engaged.

At least if you’re going to get on a soapbox and try to talk about QC like you’re somehow an expert or informed; at least make sure you know what has been shown, reported, and in development currently that has been publically announced so that you don’t look like you’re an un-informed consultant doing a superficial presentation and didn’t even bother doing the due diligence 1st. Otherwise, you just discredited your VC/ firm to the public and to those working on QC.

watch time: 28 minutes

One of the key insights that legendary physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman had was that quantum mechanics (the branch of physics that deals with subatomic particles, uncertainty principle, and many other concepts beyond classic physics) is just way too complicated to simulate using traditional computers.

Nature, of course, can handle these complex calculations — computers however can’t do those same calculations (or would take a prohibitively long time and amount of resources to do so). But this isn’t just about being able to do more with computers in a faster (or smaller) way: It’s about solving problems that we couldn’t solve with traditional computers; it’s about a difference of kind not just degree.

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