What are the ultimate powers of quantum computers, quantum communications and quantum precision measurement systems?
MIT's new $3.5 million W. M. Keck Foundation Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory (xQIT) has been inaugurated with $1.63 million in funding from the Keck Foundation, as well as funding from MIT and other sponsors, to discover answers to these fundamental, yet still unsolved, questions.
Professor Seth Lloyd of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Jeffrey H. Shapiro, the Julius A. Stratton Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), will lead the new center.
The new center enables a major new push by MIT theorists in the international race to determine the ultimate capabilities of quantum information systems. Establishing these theoretical capabilities would be a step towards being able to exploit quantum effects for novel applications, including computers, communication networks and global positioning systems.
As technological advances drive contemporary systems and devices to ever smaller and faster scales, mastery of quantum mechanical effects is proving crucial to overcoming the current limitations of classical systems and creating the next generation of applications in which macroscopic quantum phenomena play an explicit role.
MIT President Susan Hockfield said, "The Keck Foundation has a distinguished history of supporting bold research efforts and laying the groundwork at pivotal moments to enable breakthrough scientific progress.
"MIT is grateful for the foundation's foresight in funding this new center at a time when much federal support is devoted to applications of quantum information science, but less to the fundamental quantum science theory needed to frame and solve some of the most important questions."
MIT's research team will pursue theoretical problems in three key areas: adiabatic quantum computing, quantum channel capacity and quantum sensing and control.
The new center, based in the RLE, unites theorists in five academic departments and five major research laboratories and centers in a coordinated project that will be one of the largest theoretical research efforts at MIT. In addition to Lloyd and Shapiro, senior investigators include Professors Edward H. Farhi, Jeffrey Goldstone, Leonid S. Levitov, Sanjoy K. Mitter, Peter W. Shor and Jean-Jaques E. Slotine.
Said MIT's Vice President for Research Claude R. Canizares, "One of the most exciting things about the Keck Foundation's support for the new center is that it creates a locus of interdepartmental and interdisciplinary common purpose among MIT's researchers in quantum information theory. Our individual, world-leading efforts in quantum information science can now be integrated in a way that will improve the chances of success in the three important research areas of xQIT."
Lloyd, the program's principal investigator, said, "The Keck-funded center on extreme quantum information theory gives us a huge opportunity to uncover the truth about the universe at its most fundamental scales. xQIT assembles an unmatched team of scientists and engineers to attack some of the toughest problems in the field."
Observing Quantum Transactions In A Nanotube Excitons are "quasiparticles" created when a photon strikes a semiconductor and excites an electron to a higher energy level. The electron leaves behind a positively charged void called a "hole." That hole pairs with the electron to form the exciton, which takes on a life of its own that ends abruptly when it emits a photon or becomes quenched.
Quantum Bit (qubit) Circuit NEC Corporation, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) have together successfully demonstrated the world's first quantum bit (qubit) circuit that can control the strength of coupling between qubits. Technology achieving control of the coupling strength between qubits is vital to the realization of a practical quantum computer, and has been long awaited in the scientific field.
Spintronics Technology In 1994, Bandyopadhyay and colleagues were the first group to propose the use of spin in classical computing. Then two years later, they were among the first researchers to propose the use of spin in quantum computing. The recent work goes a long way toward implementing some of these ideas.
Designing Quantum Computers As if building a computer out of rubidium atoms and laser beams weren’t difficult enough, scientists sometimes have to work as if blindfolded: The quirks of quantum physics can cause correlations between the atoms to fade from view at crucial times.
Quantum Computer Demonstrated Quantum computing offers the potential to create value in areas where problems or requirements exceed the capability of digital computing, the company said. But D-Wave explains that its new device is intended as a complement to conventional computers, to augment existing machines and their market, not as a replacement for them.
Quantum Computing Breakthrough "Our work represents a breakthrough in the search for a nanoscopic [atomic scale] mechanism that could be used for a data readout device," says Christoph Boehme, assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah. "We have demonstrated experimentally that the nuclear spin orientation of phosphorus atoms embedded in silicon can be measured by very subtle electric currents passing through the phosphorus atoms."
Research: Ion Trap Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have designed and built a novel electromagnetic trap for ions that could be easily mass produced to potentially make quantum computers large enough for practical use. The new trap, described in the June 30 issue of Physical Review Letters,* may help scientists surmount what is currently the most significant barrier to building a working quantum computer—scaling up components and processes that have been successfully demonstrated individually.
Information Processing In the drive to understand and harness quantum effects as they relate to information processing, scientists in Waterloo and Massachusetts have benchmarked quantum control methods on a 12-Qubit system. Their research was performed on the largest quantum information processor to date.
A Quantum Computer, One Dot at a Time Quantum computers do not yet exist, but it is known that they can bypass all known encryption schemes used today on the Internet. Quantum computers also are capable of efficiently solving the most important equation in quantum physics: the Schrödinger equation, which describes the time-dependence of quantum mechanical systems. Hence, if quantum computers can be built, they likely will have as large an impact on technology as the transistor.
Better Memory with Quantum Computer Bits Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used charged atoms (ions) to demonstrate a quantum physics version of computer memory lasting longer than 10 seconds—more than 100,000 times longer than in previous experiments on the same ions. The advance improves prospects for making practical, reliable quantum computers (which make use of the properties of quantum systems rather than transistors for performing calculations or storing information). Quantum computers, if they can be built, could break today’s best encryption systems, accelerate database searching, develop novel products such as fraud-proof digital signatures or simulate complex biological systems to help design new drugs.
The Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), Xbox and Nintendo Wii have captivated a generation of computer gamers with bold graphics and rapid-fire animation. But these high-tech toys can do a lot more than just play games. At North Carolina State University, Dr. Frank Mueller imagined using the power of the new PS3 to create a high-powered computing environment for a fraction of the cost of the supercomputers on the market.
Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have patented a discovery that could significantly increase reliability and reduce cost in equipment that helps protect U.S. military aircraft from attack.
The patent covers a device called a digital crystal video receiver (DCVR), a vital part of the radar warning receiver (RWR) system that alerts an aircraft crew to enemy ground-radar activity. GTRI researchers Michael J. Willis and Michael L. McGuire, working with Air Force scientist Charlie W. Clark, have patented a way to use digital circuitry to perform many functions formerly allotted to more-problematic analog chips.
A group of European researchers has developed a spinal cord model of the salamander and implemented it in a novel amphibious salamander-like robot. The robot changes its speed and gait in response to simple electrical signals, suggesting that the distributed neural system in the spinal cord holds the key to vertebrates' complex locomotor capabilities.
Scientists return this week to the world’s deepest known sinkhole, Cenote Zacatón in Mexico, to resume tests of a NASA-funded robot called DEPTHX, designed to survey and explore for life in one of Earth’s most extreme regions and potentially in outer space.
If all goes well with this second round of testing and exploration, the team will return in May for a full-scale exploration of the Zacatón system.