Study shows neutrons can bind to nanoscale atomic clusters known as quantum dots. The finding may provide insights into material properties and quantum effects.
Neutrons are subatomic particles that have no electric charge, unlike protons and electrons. That means that while the electromagnetic force is responsible for most of the interactions between radiation and materials, neutrons are essentially immune to that force.
Neutron interaction through the strong force.
Rice University physicists have discovered a phase-changing quantum material — and a method for finding more like it — that could potentially be used to create flash-like memory capable of storing quantum bits of information, or qubits, even when a quantum computer is powered down.
Phase-Changing Materials and Digital Memory
Phase-changing materials have been used in commercially available non-volatile digital memory. In rewritable DVDs, for example, a laser is used to heat minute bits of material that cools to form either crystals or amorphous clumps. Two phases of the material, which have very different optical properties, are used to store the ones and zeros of digital bits of information.
An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has demonstrated experimentally that electrons in naturally occurring double-layer graphene move like particles without any mass, in the same way that light travels. Furthermore, they have shown that the current can be “switched” on and off, which has potential for developing tiny, energy-efficient transistors—like the light switch in your house but at a nanoscale.
Check out the math & physics courses that I mentioned (many of which are free!) and support this channel by going to https://brilliant.org/Sabine/ where you can create your Brilliant account. The first 200 will get 20% off the annual premium subscription. In the diagram at 4 minutes 30 seconds, the labels for h_1 and h_2 are mixed up. Sorry about that! Subscribe to my weekly science newsletter: https://sabinehossenfelder.com/ Everything I am talking about here is standard material of undergrad physics textbooks. My personal favorite is good old Goldstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic… On variational principles more specifically I quite like this textbook: https://link.springer.com/book/10.100… You can support me on Patreon: / sabine 0:00 Intro 0:45 Optimization 1:35 Shortest Path 3:20 Least Time 5:36 Least Action 10:27 Quantum Mechanics 11:53 Sponsor Message.
I found this on NewsBreak: Crucial connection for ‘quantum internet’ made for the first time.
However, this development is being held up because quantum information can be lost when transmitted over long distances. One way to overcome this barrier is to divide the network into smaller segments and link them all up with a shared quantum state.
To do this requires a means to store the quantum information and retrieve it again: that is, a quantum memory device. This must ‘talk’ to another device that allows the creation of quantum information in the first place.
For the first time, researchers have created such a system that interfaces these two key components and uses regular optical fibers to transmit the quantum data.
In a basement under the office at the University of Copenhagen, where Niels Bohr once conducted his research, the team toiled to demonstrate an innovative approach to storing quantum data – the quantum drum.
Made of ceramic, the small membrane of the drum has holes scattered around its edges in a neat pattern. When a laser light is incident on the membrane, it begins beating. The sonic vibrations of the drum can be stored and forwarded.
Through their previous work, the researchers know that the membrane stays in a fragile quantum state and can, therefore, receive and transmit data without losing it.
‘Three Nines’ Surpassed: Quantinuum Notches Milestones For Hardware Fidelity And Quantum Volume Formed in 2021, Quantinuum is the combination of the quantum hardware team from Honeywell Quantum Solutions (HQS) and the quantum software team at Cambridge Quantum Computing, HQS was founded in 2014.
Quantinuum has raised the bar for the global ecosystem by achieving the historic and much-vaunted “three 9’s” 2-qubit gate fidelity in its commercial quantum computer and announcing that its Quantum Volume has surpassed one million – exponentially higher than its nearest competitors.
By Ilyas Khan, Founder and Chief Product Officer, Jenni Strabley, Sr Director of Offering Management
All quantum error correction schemes depend for their success on physical hardware achieving high enough fidelity. If there are too many errors in the physical qubit operations, the error correcting code has the effect of amplifying rather than diminishing overall error rates. For decades now, it has been hoped that one day a quantum computer would achieve “three 9’s” – an iconic, inherent 99.9% 2-qubit physical gate fidelity – at which point many of the error-correcting codes required for universal fault tolerant quantum computing would successfully be able to squeeze errors out of the system.
“Interfacing two key devices together is a crucial step forward in allowing quantum networking, and we are really excited to be the first team to have been able to demonstrate this,” said Dr. Sarah Thomas.
How close are we to making quantum computing a reality? This is what a recent study published in Science Advances hopes to address as an international team of researchers discuss recent progress in how quantum information is both stored and then transmitted over long distances using a quantum memory device, which scientists have attempted to develop for some time. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the processes responsible for not only making quantum computing a reality, but also enabling it to work as seamlessly as possible.
While traditional telecommunications technology uses “repeaters” to prevent the loss of information over long distances, quantum computing cannot use such technology since it will destroy quantum information along the way. While quantum computing uses photons (particles of light) to send information, storing the information using a quantum memory device for further dissemination has eluded researchers for some time. Therefore, to combat the problem of sending quantum information over long distances, two devices are required: the first will send the quantum information while the second will store them for later dissemination.
It is the linking of these two devices that this recent study addresses, as the team of more than a dozen researchers successfully connected these two devices using optical fibers to send the data, which is being hailed as a first step in developing quantum systems. This breakthrough was accomplished with the collaboration of several European universities involving the creation of a quantum dot light source and integrating it with the quantum memory device.