Two novel demonstrations bring the backbone of the quantum internet, quantum repeaters, a little closer.
Category: quantum physics – Page 584
TAMPA, Fla. — Seraphim Capital plans to trade stakes it has amassed in space technology startups on the public market through an investment trust.
The Seraphim Space Investment Trust will eventually comprise bets in 19 international startups, including satellite data specialist Spire Global, quantum encryption firm Arqit and space-based cellular network operator AST Space Mobile.
Those three recently got valuations of more than $1 billion in mergers with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), investment vehicles that offer another route to public markets.
ANOTHER OPTICAL BREAKTHROUGH COMPLEMENTING METALENSES. In addition to the ongoing revolution in optical science brought about by flat metalenses and single-photon image sensors, there is another parallel and complementing new dimension now added to the mix, which, according to this article, will allow telescopes as thin as a piece of paper.
Can you imagine one day using a telescope as thin as a sheet of paper, or a much smaller and lighter high-performance camera? Or no longer having that camera bump behind your smartphone?
In a paper published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Ottawa have proposed a new optical element that could turn these ideas into reality by dramatically miniaturizing optical devices, potentially impacting many of the applications in our lives.
To learn more about this project, we talked to lead author Dr. Orad Reshef, a senior postdoctoral fellow in the Robert Boyd Group, and research lead Dr. Jeff Lundeen, who is the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Photonics, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Ottawa, and head of the Lundeen Lab.
Toshiba’s research team has broken a new record for optical fiber-based quantum communications, thanks to a new technology called dual band stabilization.
Stefan Thomas really could have used a quantum computer this year.
The German-born programmer and crypto trader forgot the password to unlock his digital wallet, which contains 7002 bitcoin, now worth $265 million. Quantum computers, which will be several million times faster than traditional computers, could have easily helped him crack the code.
Though quantum computing is still very much in its infancy, governments and private-sector companies such as Microsoft and Google are working to make it a reality. Within a decade, quantum computers could be powerful enough to break the cryptographic security that protects cell phones, bank accounts, email addresses and — yes — bitcoin wallets.
The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics.
Quantum computing began in the early 1980s. It operates on principles of quantum physics rather than the limitations of circuits and electricity which is why it is capable of processing highly complex mathematical problems so efficiently. Quantum computing could one day achieve things that classical computing simply cannot. The evolution of quantum computers has been slow, but things are accelerating, thanks to the efforts of academic institutions such as Oxford, MIT, and the University of Waterloo, as well as companies like IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Honeywell.
IBM has held a leadership role in this innovation push and has named optimization as the most likely application for consumers and organizations alike.
Honeywell expects to release what it calls the “world’s most powerful quantum computer” for applications like fraud detection, optimization for trading strategies, security, machine learning, and chemistry and materials science.
Circa 2020 o,.o.
Long known as the hardest of all natural materials, diamonds are also exceptional thermal conductors and electrical insulators. Now, researchers have discovered a way to tweak tiny needles of diamond in a controlled way to transform their electronic properties, dialing them from insulating, through semiconducting, all the way to highly conductive, or metallic. This can be induced dynamically and reversed at will, with no degradation of the diamond material.
The research, though still at an early proof-of-concept stage, may open up a wide array of potential applications, including new kinds of broadband solar cells, highly efficient LEDs and power electronics, and new optical devices or quantum sensors, the researchers say.
Their findings, which are based on simulations, calculations, and previous experimental results, are reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper is by MIT Professor Ju Li and graduate student Zhe Shi; Principal Research Scientist Ming Dao; Professor Subra Suresh, who is president of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore as well as former dean of engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor Emeritus at MIT; and Evgenii Tsymbalov and Alexander Shapeev at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow.
In a major scientific leap, University of Queensland researchers have created a quantum microscope that can reveal biological structures that would otherwise be impossible to see.
This paves the way for applications in biotechnology, and could extend far beyond this into areas ranging from navigation to medical imaging.
The microscope is powered by the science of quantum entanglement, an effect Einstein described as “spooky interactions at a distance.”
Is the physical universe independent from us, or is it created by our minds, as suggested by scientist Robert Lanza?