Quantum Computers

Quantum computers have arrived at last, experts say – but instead of replacing standard computing methods, they are complementing them.

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Rubidium May Reveal Clues For Exotic Computing

Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaborative venture of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland at College Park, have caused ultracold rubidium atoms to undergo a startling transformation.

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Canada and Quantum Computing

Canada will become home to the largest concentration of quantum computing talent in the world, thanks to $150 million in funding from government and the founder of Research In Motion Ltd.

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Transferring Light

Dr. Hau and her co-researchers, Dr. Naomi S. Ginsberg and Dr. Sean R. Garner, stopped and extinguished a light pulse in a tiny, supercooled sodium cloud called a Bose Einstein Condensate, and then brought the light pulse back into existence in another atom cloud in a separate location.

The information inside the light pulse was transferred from the first to the second cloud by converting the light pulse into a travelling matter wave, a small atom pulse that was a perfect matter copy of the extinguished light pulse. After the matter wave entered the second cloud, the atoms there worked together to restore the original light pulse.

The work is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation and NASA.



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The Most powerful Quantum Chip

The prototype chip built by D-Wave Systems in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, is designed to handle 128 qubits of information. (The most powerful machines to date can cope with only a handful of quantum bits, or qubits, making them little more capable than a hand-held calculator.) The data is stored in 128 superconducting niobium loops as either a clockwise or an anticlockwise current, representing a 0 or a 1, or as a qubit with both currents at the same time in a quantum superposition. When the information needs to be processed, the individual qubits are manipulated by a magnetic field. To make the entire chip superconduct so that the currents can flow indefinitely without dissipating heat, it is cooled to 0.01 °C above absolute zero.

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D-Wave Systems

Quantum cryptography

Quantum cryptography may be perhaps five years ahead. Quantum computing may possibly be 15 years away. Progress in building quantum computers tends to develop in steps as researchers find new methods, so it is slow, but the theory is solid.

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Quantum Spin Hall Effect Directly Observed And Explained

An international research team has succeeded in gaining an in-depth insight into an unusual phenomenon. The researchers succeeded for the first time in directly measuring the spin of electrons in a material that exhibits the quantum spin Hall effect. This paves the way towards fault-tolerant quantum computers and towards a source of spin currents.

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When cloths can talk...

In the future, smart clothing might be able to talk. Excerpted from Alternate Reality Ain’t What It Used To Be. Copyright 2008 by Ira Nayman.


"...when the star witness in the Macy Maroon murder trial took the stand: the undershirt of Jason Modeska, the man accused of Maroon’s murder.

The protesters, who oppose the idea of smart clothing giving testimony in a criminal case, unfurled a banner that read “Time for clothing to come clean!” while chanting “No shirt! No shoes! No justice!” After several calls for order, Justice Padwihller was forced to clear the court before the trial could resume...."

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D-Wave

D-Wave is pioneering the development of a new class of high-performance computing system designed to solve complex search and optimization problems, with an initial emphasis on synthetic intelligence and machine learning applications.

D-Wave Systems, a Canadian start-up, claims to have concocted a way of proving that its quantum computer is actually a quantum computer. But to pull off the proof, it needs thousands of people to volunteer spare time on their personal computers.

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D-Wave