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What if we could use a hydrogen molecule as a quantum sensor in a terahertz laser-equipped scanning tunneling microscope? This would allow us to measure the chemical properties of materials at unprecedented time and spatial resolutions.

This new technique has now been developed by physicists at the University of California, Irvine, according to a statement released by the institution on Friday.

“This project represents an advance in both the measurement technique and the scientific question the approach allowed us to explore,” said in the press release co-author of the new study Wilson Ho, Donald Bren Professor of physics & astronomy and chemistry.

PsiQuantum, founded in 2016 by four researchers with roots at Bristol University, Stanford University, and York University, is one of a few quantum computing startups that’s kept a moderately low PR profile. (That’s if you disregard the roughly $700 million in funding it has attracted.) The main reason is PsiQuantum has eschewed the clamorous public chase for NISQ (near-term intermediate scale quantum) computers and set out to develop a million-qubit system the company says will deliver big gains on big problems as soon as it arrives.

When will that be?

PsiQuantum says it will have all the manufacturing processes in place “by the middle of the decade” and it’s working closely with GlobalFoundries (GF) to turn its vision into reality. The generous size of its funding suggests many think it will succeed. PsiQuantum is betting on a photonics-based approach called fusion-based quantum computing (paper) that relies mostly on well-understood optical technology but requires extremely precise manufacturing tolerances to scale up. It also relies on managing individual photons, something that has proven difficult for others.

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Physicists at the University of California, Irvine have demonstrated the use of a hydrogen molecule as a quantum sensor in a terahertz laser-equipped scanning tunneling microscope, a technique that can measure the chemical properties of materials at unprecedented time and spatial resolutions.