{"id":91948,"date":"2019-06-11T17:42:25","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T00:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/engineers-design-nanostructured-diamond-metalens-for-compact-quantum-technologies"},"modified":"2019-06-11T17:42:25","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T00:42:25","slug":"engineers-design-nanostructured-diamond-metalens-for-compact-quantum-technologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/engineers-design-nanostructured-diamond-metalens-for-compact-quantum-technologies","title":{"rendered":"Engineers design nanostructured diamond metalens for compact quantum technologies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/engineers-design-nanostructured-diamond-metalens-for-compact-quantum-technologies.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At the chemical level, diamonds are no more than carbon atoms aligned in a precise, three-dimensional (3D) crystal lattice. However, even a seemingly flawless diamond contains defects: spots in that lattice where a carbon atom is missing or has been replaced by something else. Some of these defects are highly desirable; they trap individual electrons that can absorb or emit light, causing the various colors found in diamond gemstones and, more importantly, creating a platform for diverse quantum technologies for advanced computing, secure communication and precision sensing.<\/p>\n<p>Quantum technologies are based on units of quantum information known as \u201cqubits.\u201d The spin of electrons are prime candidates to serve as qubits; unlike binary computing systems where data takes the form of only 0s or 1s, electron spin can represent information as 0, 1, or both simultaneously in a quantum superposition. Qubits from <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/diamonds\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">diamonds<\/a> are of particular interest to quantum scientists because their quantum-mechanical properties, including superposition, exist at room temperature, unlike many other potential quantum resources.<\/p>\n<p>The practical challenge of collecting information from a single atom deep inside a crystal is a daunting one, however. Penn Engineers addressed this problem in a recent study in which they devised a way to pattern the surface of a diamond that makes it easier to collect light from the defects inside. Called a metalens, this <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/surface+structure\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">surface structure<\/a> contains nanoscale features that bend and focus the light emitted by the defects, despite being effectively flat.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-06-nanostructured-diamond-metalens-compact-quantum.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the chemical level, diamonds are no more than carbon atoms aligned in a precise, three-dimensional (3D) crystal lattice. However, even a seemingly flawless diamond contains defects: spots in that lattice where a carbon atom is missing or has been replaced by something else. Some of these defects are highly desirable; they trap individual electrons [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,4,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}