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Artist’s rendition of microwaves changing the spin of an electron

In a stunning scientific achievement that could open the way for Moore’s Law to continue indefinitely, Australian scientists have created the first working quantum bit out of a single atom in silicon. The next step is to put two of these quantum bits together to form a logic gate, which opens the path for supercomputers to operate on a quantum processor.

In a paper published today in Nature, the team details how it was able to control both the spin of a single electron. The electron in question was bound to a phosphorus atom. The scientists used a microwave field to control the electron, which was implanted next to a silicon transistor. The atom was precisely placed  by Dr. David Jamieson through a process that makes even high-precision electronics like smartphones seem like they were put together with wood glue.

As team leader Dr. Andrea Morello noted, “This is the quantum equivalent of typing a number on your keyboard… Our technology is fundamentally the same as is already being used in countless everyday electronic devices, and that’s a trillion-dollar industry.” Whoa. Can’t wait until the iPhone 36 comes out with a quantum processor emitting microwaves.

Image courtesy of Tony Melov

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LG Quantum Windows Phone 7 Now Available Through AT&T, Quantum dot lasers could offer 25Gbps in data communication,

While people get excited about future internets being powered by quantum particles, nobody really knows how that’s going to work yet. But Chinese physicists have taken a step in the right direction, by creating the world’s first quantum router. More »

Computers are normally limited by the fixed nature of their chipsets: once the silicon is out of the factory, its capabilities are forever locked in. The City College of New York and University of California Berkeley have jointly developed a technique that could break chips free of these prisons and speed along quantum computing. They found that hitting gallium arsenide with a laser light pattern aligns the spins of the atoms under the rays, creating a spintronic circuit that can re-map at a moment’s notice. The laser could be vital to quantum computers, which can depend heavily or exclusively on spintronics to work: a simple shine could get electrons storing a much wider range of numbers and consequently handling many more calculations at once. Research is only just now becoming public, however; even though gallium arsenide is common in modern technology, we’ll need to be patient before we find quantum PCs at the local big-box retail chain. Despite this, we could still be looking at an early step in a shift from computers with many single-purpose components to the abstracted, all-powerful quantum machines we’ve held in our science fiction dreams.

CCNY, UC Berkeley develop lasers that could rewrite quantum chips, spin those atoms right round originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 04:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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