In the race toward practical quantum computers and networks, photons—fundamental particles of light—hold intriguing possibilities as fast carriers of information at room temperature.
Photons are typically controlled and coaxed into quantum states via waveguides on extended microchips, or through bulky devices built from lenses, mirrors, and beam splitters. The photons become entangled—enabling them to encode and process quantum information in parallel—through complex networks of these optical components. But such systems are notoriously difficult to scale up due to the large numbers and imperfections of parts required to do any meaningful computation or networking.
Could all those optical components be collapsed into a single, flat, ultra-thin array of subwavelength elements that control light in the exact same way, but with far fewer fabricated parts?
BELLEVUE, Wash. — Quantum physics and outer space may seem as different as two tech frontiers can be, but the challenges facing Pacific Northwest ventures that are aiming to make their fortune on those frontiers are surprisingly similar.
Amid the current turbulence on the national political scene, it’s getting harder to capture the attention — and gain the support — of the federal government, which has historically been the leading funder of research and development. And that means it’s more important than ever for researchers, industry leaders and local officials to join forces.
“Think of it as a triad,” said Jason Yager, executive director of the Montana Photonics and Quantum Alliance, which is one of the beneficiaries of a $41 million Tech Hub grant awarded by the federal government a year ago. “If all of these pieces are working together, then where they meet is socio-economic growth, and then you’re ready to bring in the additional funding to launch that.”
Sahai has found a way to create extreme electromagnetic fields never before possible in a laboratory. These electromagnetic fields—created when electrons in materials vibrate and bounce at incredibly high speeds—power everything from computer chips to super particle colliders that search for evidence of dark matter. Until now, creating fields strong enough for advanced experiments has required huge, expensive facilities.
For example, scientists chasing evidence of dark matter use machines like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. To accommodate the radiofrequency cavities and superconducting magnets needed for accelerating high energy beams, the collider is 16.7 miles long. Running experiments at that scale demands huge resources, is incredibly expensive, and can be highly volatile.
Sahai developed a silicon-based, chip-like material that can withstand high-energy particle beams, manage the energy flow, and allow scientists to access electromagnetic fields created by the oscillations, or vibrations, of the quantum electron gas—all in a space about the size of your thumb.
The rapid movement creates the electromagnetic fields. With Sahai’s technique, the material manages the heat flow generated by the oscillation and keeps the sample intact and stable. This gives scientists a way to see activity like never before and opens the possibility of shrinking miles-long colliders into a chip.
A University of Colorado Denver engineer is on the cusp of giving scientists a new tool that can help them turn sci-fi into reality.
Imagine a safe gamma ray laser that could eradicate cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue. Or a tool that could help determine if Stephen Hawking’s multiverse theory is real by revealing the fabric underlying the universe.
Quantum batteries (QBs) are energy storage devices that could serve as an alternative to classical batteries, potentially charging faster and enabling the extraction of more energy. In contrast with existing batteries, these batteries leverage effects rooted in quantum mechanics, such as entanglement and superposition.
Despite their promise, QBs have not yet reached optimal performances, partly because they are prone to decoherence simultaneously. This is a loss of coherence (i.e., the ability of quantum systems to exist in a superposition of multiple states), prompted by interactions between a system and its surrounding environment.
Decoherence causes QBs to self-discharge, or in other words, to spontaneously start releasing the energy they are storing. This self-discharging process has so far prevented the batteries’ practical application.
In a breakthrough for antimatter research, the BASE collaboration at CERN has kept an antiproton—the antimatter counterpart of a proton—oscillating smoothly between two different quantum states for almost a minute while trapped. The achievement, reported in a paper published today in the journal Nature, marks the first demonstration of an antimatter quantum bit, or qubit, and paves the way for substantially improved comparisons between the behavior of matter and antimatter.