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Category: quantum physics – Page 593

Finnish Researchers Say Their First Quantum Computer Is Up and Running

Finland’s first quantum computer was commissioned at a research center near the capital Helsinki, where scientists will use it to study next-generation computing power.

The 5 quantum-bit computer was developed “to learn how to build a quantum computer, how to program one and how to operate one in the future,” Pekka Pursula, research manager at the VTT Technical Research Centre, said by phone on Tuesday. The machine was the joint work of VTT and quantum computing hardware company IQM Finland Oy.

“This 5-qubit computer has relatively low computational power, and it’s not enough to solve practical problems,” Pursula said. The researchers plan to build a 50-qubit machine by 2024 that could be used for applications such as modeling viruses and drugs, and designing materials that today’s technology is ill-equipped to handle.

Physicists Confirm The Existence of Time Crystals in Epic Quantum Computer Simulation

Are you in the market for a loophole in the laws that forbid perpetual motion? Knowing you’ve got yourself an authentic time crystal takes more than a keen eye for high-quality gems.

In a new study, an international team of researchers used Google’s Sycamore quantum computing hardware to double-check their theoretical vision of a time crystal, confirming it ticks all of the right boxes for an emerging form of technology we’re still getting our head around.

Similar to conventional crystals made of endlessly repeating units of atoms, a time crystal is an infinitely repeating change in a system, one that remarkably doesn’t require energy to enter or leave.

AWS re: Invent: Faster chips, smarter AI, and developer tools grab the spotlight

This week, Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) kicked off its tenth re: Invent conference, an event where it typically announces the biggest changes in the cloud computing industry’s dominant platform. This year’s news includes faster chips, more aggressive artificial intelligence, more developer-friendly tools, and even a bit of quantum computing for those who want to explore its ever-growing potential.

Amazon is working to lower costs by boosting the performance of its hardware. Their new generation of machines powered by the third generation of AMD’s EPYC processors, the M6a, is touted as offering a 35% boost in price/performance over the previous generation of M5a machines built with the second generation of the EPYC chips. They’ll be available in sizes that range from two virtual CPUs with 8GB of RAM (m6a.large) up to 192 virtual CPUs and 768GB of RAM (m6a.48xlarge).

AWS also notes that the chips will boast “always-on memory encryption” and rely on faster custom circuitry for faster encryption and decryption. The feature is a nod to users who worry about sharing hardware in the cloud and, perhaps, exposing their data.

A unique quantum-mechanical interaction between electrons and topological defects in layered materials

An international team led by EPFL scientists, has unveiledthat has only been observed in engineered atomic thin layers. The phenomenon can be reproduced by the native defects of lab grown large crystals, making future investigation of Kondo systems and quantum electronic devices more accessible.

The properties of materials that are technologically interesting often originate from defects on their atomic structure. For example, changing the optical properties of rubies with chrome inclusions has helped develop lasers, while nitrogen-vacancy in diamonds are paving the way for applications such as quantum magnetometers. Even in the metallurgical industry, atomic-scale defects like dislocation enhances the strength of forged steel.

Another manifestation of atomic-scale defects is the Kondo effect, which affects a metal’s conduction properties by scattering and slowing the electrons and changing the flow of electrical current through it. This Kondo effect was first observed in metals with very few magnetic defects, e.g. gold with few parts per million of iron inclusions. When the diluted magnetic atoms align all the electrons spin around them, this slows the electrical current motion inside the material, equally along every direction.

A New, Simpler Quantum Computer Runs at Room Temperature

And it uses components already commercially available.

Engineers at Stanford University have demonstrated a new, simpler design for a quantum computer that could help practical versions of the machine finally become a reality, a report from New Atlas reveals.

The new design sees a single atom entangle with a series of photons, allowing it to process and store more information, as well as run at room temperature — unlike the prototype machines being developed by the likes of Google and IBM.

Quantum computers rely on qubits rather than the ones and zeroes, or bits, of classical computing. Qubits can exist in three different states — a one, a zero, or a superposition of one and zero simultaneously — meaning they can, in theory, carry out computations it would take classical computers thousands of years to achieve.

Though quantum computers have the capacity to perform such complex tasks, they have so far been hindered by their sensitivity to heat and vibrations — a problem that means they have to be kept at temperatures close to absolute zero.

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Physicists create time crystals with quantum computers

There is a huge global effort to engineer a computer capable of harnessing the power of quantum physics to carry out computations of unprecedented complexity. While formidable technological obstacles still stand in the way of creating such a quantum computer, today’s early prototypes are still capable of remarkable feats.

For example, the creation of a new phase of matter called a “time crystal.” Just as a crystal’s structure repeats in space, a time crystal repeats in time and, importantly, does so infinitely and without any further input of energy—like a clock that runs forever without any batteries. The quest to realize this phase of matter has been a longstanding challenge in theory and experiment—one that has now finally come to fruition.

In research published Nov. 30 in Nature, a team of scientists from Stanford University, Google Quantum AI, the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems and Oxford University detail their creation of a time crystal using Google’s Sycamore quantum computing hardware.

Weather forecast favorable for SpaceX launch this week

Today’s quantum computers are complicated to build, difficult to scale up, and require temperatures colder than interstellar space to operate. These challenges have led researchers to explore the possibility of building quantum computers that work using photons—particles of light. Photons can easily carry information from one place to another, and photonic quantum computers can operate at room temperature, so this approach is promising. However, although people have successfully created individual quantum “logic gates” for photons, it’s challenging to construct large numbers of gates and connect them in a reliable fashion to perform complex calculations.