Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday announced Ocelot, its first-generation quantum computing chip, as it enters the race against fellow tech giants in harnessing the experimental technology.
Developed by the AWS Center for Quantum Computing at the California Institute of Technology, the new chip can reduce the costs of implementing quantum error correction by up to 90%, according to the company.
When molecules collide with surfaces, they exchange energy with the surface atoms. This complex process is influenced by quantum interference, where different pathways overlap, creating patterns where some paths enhance each other while others cancel out. This affects how molecules exchange energy and react with surfaces.
Observing quantum interference in collisions with heavier molecules like methane (CH4) was challenging due to the many possible pathways. Scientists wondered if quantum effects would disappear, making classical physics enough to describe these processes.
This review discusses the development and uses of imatinib mesylate, a protein tyrosine kinase inhibitor useful in the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors that was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Imatinib targets platelet-derived growth factor receptor, inhibits the fusion product of the Philadelphia chromosome, and targets c-kit, a protein tyrosine kinase. The drug may also be effective in the treatment of other tumors that express platelet-derived growth factor receptor or c-kit.
Chinese scientists unveiled a superconducting quantum computer prototype named “Zuchongzhi 3.0” with 105 qubits on Monday (Beijing Time), marking a breakthrough in China’s quantum computing advancements.
The achievement also sets a new record in quantum computational advantage within superconducting systems.
Developed by Chinese quantum physicists Pan Jianwei, Zhu Xiaobo, Peng Chengzhi, etc., “Zuchongzhi 3.0” features 105 readable qubits and 182 couplers. It processes quantum random circuit sampling tasks at a speed quadrillion times faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputer and 1 million times faster than Google’s latest results published in Nature in October 2024.
In classical electromagnetism, electric and magnetic fields are the fundamental entities responsible for all physical effects. There is a compact formulation of electromagnetism that expresses the fields in terms of another quantity known as the electromagnetic potential, which can have a value everywhere in space. The fields are easily derived theoretically from the potential, but the potential itself was taken to be purely a mathematical device, with no physical meaning.
In quantum mechanics, shifts in the electromagnetic potential alter the description of a charged particle only by shifting its phase—that is, by advancing or retarding the crests and troughs in its quantum wave function. In general, however, such a phase change does not lead to any difference in the measurable properties of a particle.
But in 1959 Yakir Aharonov and David Bohm of the University of Bristol, UK, devised a thought experiment that linked the potential to a measurable result. In their scenario, a beam of electrons is split, with the two halves made to travel around opposite sides of a cylindrical electromagnet, or solenoid. The magnetic field is concentrated inside the solenoid and can be made arbitrarily weak outside by making the cylinder extremely narrow. So Aharonov and Bohm argued that the two electron paths can travel through an essentially field-free region that surrounds the concentrated field within the electromagnet.
A new high-performance quantum processor boasts 105 superconducting qubits and rivals Google’s acclaimed Willow processor.
In the quest for useful quantum computers, processors based on superconducting qubits are especially promising. These devices are both programmable and capable of error correction. In December 2024, researchers at Google Quantum AI in California reported a 105-qubit superconducting processor known as Willow (see Research News: Cracking the Challenge of Quantum Error Correction) [1]. Now Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues have demonstrated their own 105-qubit processor, Zuchongzhi 3.0 (Fig. 1) [2]. The two processors have similar performances, indicating a neck-and-neck race between the two groups.
Quantum advantage is the claim that a quantum computer can perform a specific task faster than the most powerful nonquantum, or classical, computer. A standard task for this purpose is called random circuit sampling, and it works as follows. The quantum computer applies a sequence of randomly ordered operations, known as a random circuit, to a set of qubits. This circuit transforms the qubits in a unique and complex way. The computer then measures the final states of the qubits. By repeating this process many times with different random circuits, the quantum computer records a probability distribution of final qubit states.
For decades, scientists have relied on electrodes and dyes to track the electrical activity of living cells. Now, engineers at the University of California San Diego have discovered that quantum materials just a single atom thick can do the job—using only light.
A new study, published in Nature Photonics, shows that these ultra-thin semiconductors, which trap electrons in two dimensions, can be used to sense the biological electrical activity of living cells with high speed and resolution.
Scientists have continually been seeking better ways to track the electrical activity of the body’s most excitable cells, such as neurons, heart muscle fibers and pancreatic cells. These tiny electrical pulses orchestrate everything from thought to movement to metabolism, but capturing them in real time and at large scales has remained a challenge.
Light was long considered to be a wave, exhibiting the phenomenon of interference in which ripples like those in water waves are generated under specific interactions. Light also bends around corners, resulting in fringing effects, which is termed diffraction. The energy of light is associated with its intensity and is proportional to the square of the amplitude of the electric field, but in the photoelectric effect, the energy of emitted electrons is found to be proportional to the frequency of radiation.
This observation was first made by Philipp Lenard, who did initial work on the photoelectric effect. In order to explain this, in 1905, Einstein suggested in Annalen der Physik that light comprises quantized packets of energy, which came to be called photons. It led to the theory of the dual nature of light, according to which light can behave like a wave or a particle depending on its interactions, paving the way for the birth of quantum mechanics.
Although Einstein’s work on photons found broader acceptance, eventually leading to his Nobel Prize in Physics, Einstein was not fully convinced. He wrote in a 1951 letter, “All the 50 years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to the answer to the question: What are light quanta?”
From computer chips to image sensors in cameras, today’s technology is overwhelmingly based on a semiconductor called silicon. This technology has been shrinking for decades—think of early room-sized computers compared to today’s desktops—but physical limitations will soon prevent further improvement.
That’s why scientists and engineers are preparing for a new generation of technology—one based on quantum mechanics.
The electrons in so-called “quantum materials” behave differently than those in silicon, enabling more complex behaviors, like magnetism and superconductivity, that are useful for future quantum technologies.