Lifeboat Foundation

The best examples are simple. This is especially true in quantum computing, where complexity can get out of hand pretty fast. A team of researchers at D-Wave, with collaborators from USC, Tokyo Tech, and Saitama Medical University, recently explored a quantum phase transition — a complex subject by anyone’s standards — in a very simple 1D chain of magnetic spins. Our work, published today in Nature Physics, studies quantum critical dynamics in a coherently annealed Ising chain. Here are a few things we learned along the way.

Programmable quantum phase transitions, as ordered

Phase transitions, such as water to ice, are commonly attributed to changes in temperature. But there is another type of phase transition —-a quantum phase transition (QPT) —-where quantum effects determine the properties of a physical system, in the absence of thermal effects. In a 1D chain, spins at the end of the simulation are either “up” or “down”, and we get “kinks” separating blocks of up spins and down spins (during the simulation, spins can be in a superposition of up and down). The density and spacing of kinks depend on, among other things, the speed and “quantumness” of the experiment. In this work we guided the programmable system of spins through a QPT and investigated the effect of varying parameters such as speed, system size, and temperature.

Red supergiant stars are explosions waiting to happen. They are in the last stage of their life, red and swollen as they fuse heavier elements in…

Cancer has the terrifying ability to spread from any part of the body to another – and it’s part of what has always made these debilitating diseases so deadly. This process, known as metastasis, has always baffled scientists. Now, though, a new study may have pointed researchers in the right direction to help them understand how cancer spreads, which could also lead to new treatment options in the future.

Nekton.

The discovery is expected to result in enhanced safeguards for the marine life and fisheries in this special region, according to a press release published on Tuesday by Nekton.

In The Analysis of Matter (1927) Bertrand Russell defended a couple of theses that amounted to a novel approach to the mind-body problem. Similar claims were defended by Eddington in his Gifford lectures of the same year. This approach was forgotten about in the latter half of the twentieth century, perhaps because it didn’t fit with the physicalist predilections of the period. However, it has recently been rediscovered, leading to a view – or better a school of views – known as ‘Russellian monism.’ Russellian monism is increasingly seen as a promising middle way between dualism and physicalism, avoiding the problems associated with either of these extremes. In this lecture, I explain the basic idea.

Scientists have demonstrated a powerful technique that will allow quantum computers to store much more information in photons of light. The team managed to encode eight levels of data into photons and read it back easily, representing an exponential leap over previous systems.

Traditional computers store and process information in binary bits, which can hold a value of zero or one. Quantum computers boost this power drastically with their quantum bits, or qubits, which can hold values of zero, one or both at the same time. But an emerging version of qubits, known as qudits, up the game even more. Rather than just two values like qubits, qudits can theoretically contain dozens of different values, greatly increasing the data processing and storage potential. Better yet, qudits are also more resilient against external noise that can disrupt qubits.

But, of course, there’s a catch: it’s hard to measure and read back data stored on qudits. So for the new study, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University and EPFL have developed a technique to produce and read qudits more reliably. In their experiments, they generated qudits that could each hold up to eight levels of information, and quantum-entangled them in pairs to generate a 64-dimensional quantum space. This, the team says, is four times larger than in previous studies.

On the bright side, there are some things we can do to prevent that outcome… maybe.