Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University and researchers at Oxford University and in Germany are one step closer towards the realization of quantum computers by harnessing the novel properties of their ultrapure and highly enriched silicon.
The exotic sub-atomic properties of atoms and sub-atomic particles such as electrons, photons, and ions are the key to these quantum computers, which exploit the power of these particles to carry out processing and memory tasks. The researchers discovered that the special silicon called ‘28Silicon’ enables processes to occur and be studied in a solid state that were earlier thought to require a near-perfect vacuum.
This novel silicon material allowed the research team to extend the time from a fraction ofa second to three minutes, which is good enough for scientists to study, manipulate, and measure the processes and this is definitely an achievement in solid-state systems. This result paves the way to use solid-state semi-conductors like silicon for quantum computing applications, said Thewalt. What surprised the research team were the sharp spectral lines in the innovative material, which is perfect and pure. However, still more work is needed to realize quantum computers.
Typical computers process data as ‘bits’ of information. The bit is a basic unit of information having a value of either ‘0’ or ‘1.’ On the other hand, in the quantum computer, the quantum bit or qubit can behave as both 0 and 1 as well as all the values between them simultaneously. A quantum computer with sufficient qubits will be capable of solving complex problems within minutes, which may take today’s super computers years to complete and the normal computer, millions of years.
Source: http://www.sfu.ca