How can a computer chip the size of a human hair enhance the future of quantum computing? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated a new device that could greatly reduce the size of quantum computers. This study has the potential to help scientists and engineers develop new and exciting methods for quantum computers, which can conduct tasks with far greater efficiency than classical computers.
For the study, the researchers presented a novel device estimated to be 100 times smaller than a human hair, but capable of potentially advancing quantum computing using lasers controlling basic quantum information units called qubits. Laser power is produced through microwave-frequency vibrations at billions of times per second, enabling laser beam control, improving both power and efficiency.
“You’re not going to build a quantum computer with 100,000 bulk electro-optic modulators sitting in a warehouse full of optical tables,” said Dr. Matthew Eichenfield, who is a Professor of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona and a co-author on the study. “You need some much more scalable ways to manufacture them that don’t have to be hand-assembled and with long optical paths. While you’re at it, if you can make them all fit on a few small microchips and produce 100 times less heat, you’re much more likely to make it work.”
First proposed in the early 1980s, quantum computing is predicted to have the potential to solve problems with greater efficiency and speed than classical computers by harnessing quantum effects like superposition and entanglement. The applications of quantum computing include cryptography, materials and drug discovery, climate and financial modeling, optimization, and simulating complex quantum systems fundamental to physics and chemistry.
How will this new device enhance quantum computers in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Nature Communications, EurekAlert!
Featured Image Credit: Jake Freedman