IBM has announced a 10-year, $100 million initiative with the University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago to develop a quantum-centric supercomputer powered by 100,000 qubits.
Quantum-centric supercomputing is an entirely new – and as of now, unrealised – era of high-performance computing. A 100,000-qubit system would serve as a foundation to address some of the world’s most pressing problems that even the most advanced supercomputers of today may never be able to solve.
Light is a key carrier of information. It enables high-speed data transmission around the world via fiber-optic telecommunication networks. This information-carrying capability can be extended to transmitting quantum information by encoding it in single particles of light (photons).
“To efficiently load single photons into quantum information processing devices, they must have specific properties: the right central wavelength or frequency, a suitable duration, and the right spectrum,” explains Dr. Michał Karpinski, head of the Quantum Photonics Laboratory at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw, and an author of the paper published in Nature Photonics.
Researchers around the globe are building prototypes of quantum computers using a variety of techniques, including trapped ions, quantum dots, superconducting electric circuits, and ultracold atomic clouds. These quantum information processing platforms operate on a variety of time scales, from picoseconds through nanoseconds to even microseconds.
Quantum computing – “Youre gonna need a smarter IT team…”
• Quantum computing is expected to become a functioning reality in the next seven years. • The IT sector already has a skills gap. • Quantum computing is likely to add new skills to the shortage.
Quantum computing is expected to become a functioning reality within a generation, with many leading companies predicting it will be an adoptable technology by 2030. That’s going to bring a significant difference to traditional IT teams, as quantum computing is likely to involve different problems, different solutions, and a fairly new methodology to what we think of as the IT team’s role.
Quantum mechanics dictates that particles like atoms should also be thought of as waves and that technically we can build ‘atom lasers’ containing coherent waves of matter. The problem comes in making these matter waves last, so that they may be used in practical applications.
Now, a team of Amsterdam physicists has shown that this is indeed possible with some manipulation of the concept that underlies the atom laser, the so-called Bose-Einstein Condensate, or BEC for short, according to a press release published on June 10.
Nature Electronics volume 6, page 337 (2023) Cite this article.
Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and collaborators have succeeded in creating a “superlattice” of semiconductor quantum dots that can behave like a metal, potentially imparting exciting new properties to this popular class of materials.
Semiconducting colloidal quantum dots have garnered tremendous research interest due to their special optical properties, which arise from the quantum confinement effect. They are used in solar cells, where they can improve the efficiency of energy conversion, biological imaging, where they can be used as fluorescent probes, electronic displays, and even quantum computing, where their ability to trap and manipulate individual electrons can be exploited.
However, getting semiconductor quantum dots to efficiently conduct electricity has been a major challenge, impeding their full use. This is primarily due to their lack of orientational order in assemblies. According to Satria Zulkarnaen Bisri, lead researcher on the project, “making them metallic would enable, for example, quantum dot displays that are brighter yet use less energy than current devices.”
Researchers have developed a quantum key distribution (QKD) system based on integrated photonics that can transmit secure keys at unprecedented speeds. The proof-of-principle experiments represent an important step toward real-world application of this highly secure communication method.
QKD is a well-established method of providing secret keys for secure communication between distant parties. By using the quantum properties of light to generate secure random keys for encrypting and decrypting data, its security is based on the laws of physics, rather than computational complexity like today’s communication protocols.
“A key goal for QKD technology is the ability to simply integrate it into a real-world communications network,” said research team member Rebecka Sax from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “An important and necessary step toward this goal is the use of integrated photonics, which allows optical systems to be manufactured using the same semiconductor technology used to make silicon computer chips.”
Every color, every flash, every sunray exacts a toll on the light-sensitive tissues at the back of our eyes, producing toxic materials that risk damaging the very cells that allow us to see.
Thankfully, the pigment responsible for darkening our hair, skin, and eyes moonlights as a clean-up crew, mopping up one such dangerous compound before it accumulates into damaging clumps.
An investigation by researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany and Yale University has revealed the removal process is somewhat unusual as far as biochemistry goes, relying upon a strange quirk of quantum-like behavior.