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发帖数: 7494 | 1 CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. physicists have coaxed tiny artificial atoms into
communicating in an advance that may lead to super-fast quantum computers,
the researchers said on Wednesday.
Quantum computers hold the promise of being enormously powerful, capable of
solving in seconds problems that take today's fastest machines years to
crack.
So far, physicists have worked mostly on developing the most basic of
elements that can store information known as quantum bits, or qubits.
But a series of papers in the journal Nature suggest researchers have found
a way to get these qubits to communicate over a distance, for instance,
across a computer chip.
In the past, the best qubits could do was talk to neighboring qubits, much
like the childhood game of telephone.
But researchers from Yale University have found a way to move information
stored in a stationary quantum bit via a microwave photon to another
stationary quantum bit on the same chip.
"That is the most elementary step in building and operating a quantum
computer," said Yale physics professor Steve Girvin in a telephone interview
.
"It's a small step. It's only two qubits," Girvin said. "But it is a non-
trivial step towards this very difficult goal of building a quantum computer
."
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a part of
the U.S. Department of Commerce, described a similar feat in a separate
paper in Nature.
They repeatedly transferred quantum information between two qubits on a tiny
cable.
This technique also gave the qubits more staying power. Normally, qubits
maintain the same state for only half a microsecond.
Quantum computers must take advantage of the unusual rules of quantum
mechanics, the principles that govern nature's smallest particles.
"Quantum information is much more delicate than classical information, but
much more powerful," Girvin said.
"It is the delicate part that we have to be good engineers to deal with so
we can take advantage of the much more powerful part," he said. |
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