Advances in Quantum Computing

Physics Blog  #1

Quantum Computing Advances with control of Entanglement

The Quantum computer, which is a computer that “makes use of the quantum states of subatomic particles to store information”, was invented 30 years ago and made history for its potential to efficiently and effectively complete tasks previously considered impossible for humans using conventional computers. However, there was still one problem: “small-scale quantum effects falls apart too easily to be practical for reliably powering computers”.

Today however, scientists think they have found a solution. Using laser light, a team of scientists in Japan have developed a “precise, continuous control technology giving 60 times more success than previous efforts in sustaining the lifetime of “qubits”, the unit that quantum computers encode. Researchers have discovered that they can continue to create a “quantum behavior” known as the entangled state - “entangling more than one million different physical systems”, a world record that was only limited by data storage space.

Entangled quantum particles, which include particles such as atoms, electrons, and photons, act as a resource of quantum information processing created by the behaviors that emerge at the tiny quantum scale. Accesing them has lead to a new era of information technology. From  behaviors such as superposition, “a principle of quantum theory that describes a challenging concept about the nature and behavior of matter and forces at the subatomic level”, and entanglement, “a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently — instead, a quantum state must be described for the system as a whole”, quantum particles can perform enormous calculations simultaneously.

Akira Furusawa, of the Department of Applied Physics, School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo stated that they have solved the problem of lifetime qubits for quantum information processing and the continuing locking phase between squeezed light beams.

This advancements in quantum physics is being considered the next generation of computing after the integrated circuit, silicon-chip based computers that now lead the field of information processing technology.

What’s the difference between quantum computers and current computers?

• Current computers use “long strips of zeros and ones- called bits- to process information” while quantum computers use the power of quantum mechanics that encodes 0’s and 1’s in quantum states call qubits, which configure in two ways: “superposition” and “entanglement”, to process information.

So it is the quantum behavior of entanglement that the University of Tokyo team discovered how to manage so it could be applied to run quantum computers.