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Quantum computing could revolutionize our world. For specific and crucial tasks, it promises to be exponentially faster than the zero-or-one binary technology that underlies today’s machines, from supercomputers in laboratories to smartphones in our pockets. But developing quantum computers hinges on building a stable network of qubits—or quantum bits—to store information, access it and perform computations.

Yet the qubit platforms unveiled to date have a common problem: They tend to be delicate and vulnerable to outside disturbances. Even a stray photon can cause trouble. Developing fault-tolerant qubits—which would be immune to external perturbations—could be the ultimate solution to this challenge.

A team led by scientists and engineers at the University of Washington has announced a significant advancement in this quest. In a pair of papers published June 14 in Nature and June 22 in Science, the researchers report that in experiments with flakes of semiconductor materials—each only a single layer of atoms thick—they detected signatures of “fractional quantum anomalous Hall” (FQAH) states.

The use of single-photon.

A photon is a particle of light. It is the basic unit of light and other electromagnetic radiation, and is responsible for the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Photons have no mass, but they do have energy and momentum. They travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, and can have different wavelengths, which correspond to different colors of light. Photons can also have different energies, which correspond to different frequencies of light.

Explaining the interaction between quantized vortices and normal fluids.

Researchers from Osaka Metropolitan University, Florida State University.

Florida State University (Florida State or FSU) is a public space-grant and sea-grant research university in Tallahassee, Florida, United States that was established in 1851. The university comprises 16 separate colleges and more than 110 centers, facilities, labs, and institutes that offer more than 360 programs of study, including professional school programs.

In the quantum world, the observer determines the physical nature of what is being observed. The notion of an objective reality is lost.

Year 2013 Basically they found out water is quantum which could then be turned into a water quantum computer.

Water is vital to life as we know it, but there is still a great deal unknown when it comes to correctly modeling its properties. Now researchers have discovered room-temperature water may be even more bizarre than once suspected — quantum physics suggest its hydrogen atoms can travel surprisingly farther than before thought, report findings detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Water is just made of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom, but despite its apparent simplicity, liquid water displays a remarkable number of unusual properties, such as how it decreases in density upon freezing, and the existence of some 19 different forms of ice. Scientists traditionally ascribe water’s peculiar behavior to the hydrogen bond. Water is polar — partial electric charges separate within the molecule, leading to slightly positively charged hydrogen ends and a negatively charged oxygen middle. As such, the hydrogens in one water molecule can get attracted to the oxygen in another, a hydrogen bond that can help explain why water has such a high boiling point, for example.

All of water’s anomalies, together with its unquestionably vital role in climate and life on Earth, have led to intense research around the globe, but still much remains unknown about it. To shed light on water’s behavior, materials scientist Michele Ceriotti at the University of Oxford in England and his colleagues modeled how the atomic nuclei of water’s hydrogen might behave in a quantum way — that is, not like points as the above explanation of hydrogen bonding from classical physics would suggest, but as more delocalized, cloud-like objects.

Continue reading “Quantumness of water molecules might explain unexpected behaviors” »

A team of researchers at Microsoft Quantum has reportedly achieved a first milestone toward creating a reliable and practical quantum computer. In their paper, published in the journal Physical Review B, the group describes the milestone and their plans to build a reliable quantum computer over the next 25 years.

Physicists and computer engineers are working toward building a reliable, useful quantum computer. Such efforts have been hampered, however, by error rates. In this new effort, the team at Microsoft suggests that quantum computer development is following a trajectory similar to that of traditional computers.

In the beginning, new concepts were followed by a series of hardware upgrades that have led to the machines of today. Likewise, they suggest that while current approaches used to represent logical qubits, such as a spin transmon, or a gatemon, have been useful as learning devices, none of them are scalable. They suggest a new approach must be found that allows for scaling.

From an emerging golden age in medicine to Microsoft’s quantum supercomputer, check out this week’s awesome tech stories from around the web.

You’re familiar with the states of matter we encounter daily – such as solid, liquid, and gas – but in more exotic and extreme conditions, new states can appear, and scientists from the US and China just found one.

They’re calling it the chiral bose-liquid state, and as with every new arrangement of particles we discover, it can tell us more about the fabric and the mechanisms of the Universe around us – and in particular, at the super-small quantum scale.

States of matter describe how particles can interact with one another, giving rise to structures and various ways of behaving. Lock atoms in place, and you have a solid. Allow them to flow, you have a liquid or gas. Force charged partnerships apart, you have a plasma.

Intel – the world’s biggest computer-chip maker – has released its newest quantum chip and has begun shipping it to quantum scientists and engineers to use in their research. Dubbed Tunnel Falls, the chip contains a 12-qubit array and is based on silicon spin-qubit technology.

The distribution of the quantum chip to the quantum community is part of Intel’s plan to let researchers gain hands-on experience with the technology, while at the same time enabling new quantum research.

The first quantum labs to get access to the chip include the University of Maryland, Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Rochester and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.