With organizations like Google, Microsoft, and IBM all hustling to make the world’s first down to earth quantum computer, scientists worldwide are investigating the potential materials that could be utilized to assemble them.
Now, Associate Professor Yang Hyunsoo and his group from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Engineering have exhibited another technique which could be accustomed to convey quantum computing nearer to the real world.
Scientists have discovered a new way closely observe the electronic quantum behavior of materials. It could offer deep insights into their applications for future quantum computing.
Assoc Prof Yang said, “The NUS team, together with our collaborators from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in the United States and RMIT University in Australia, showed a practical way to observe and examine the quantum effects of electrons in topological insulators and heavy metals which could later pave the way for the development of advanced quantum computing components and devices.”
It is predicted that when quantum computing becomes more readily available, it will be able to answer some of the world’s toughest questions in everything from finance to physics. This remarkable processing power is made possible by the radical way that quantum computers operate – using light rather than electricity.
Quantum computers use laser light to interact with electrons in materials to measure the phenomenon of electron “spin”. These spinning electron states replace the ones and zeros used as the basis for traditional computers, and because they can exist in many spin states simultaneously, this allows for much more complex computing to be performed.
Nonetheless, gathering data in light of the connections of light and electrons is easier said than done. These communications are extraordinarily unpredictable and like anything in the quantum world, there is a level of vulnerability when endeavoring to foresee conduct.
In that capacity, a solid and useful approach to watch these quantum impacts has been looked for after in late research to help in the disclosure of further developed quantum computing devices.
The genuine achievement was the capacity to “see” out of the blue specific spin phenomena in topological insulators and metals utilizing a scanning photovoltage microscope.
Topological insulators are electronic materials that are protecting in their inside, however, bolster leading states on their surface, hence empowering electrons to stream along the surface of the material.
Scientists examined platinum metal as well as topological insulators Bi2Se3 and BiSbTeSe2. A connected electrical current affected the electron spin at the quantum level for these materials and the researchers could straightforwardly envision this change utilizing polarised light from the microscope.
Also, not at all like other observational procedures, the inventive exploratory setup implied that the outcomes could be accumulated at room temperature, making this a pragmatic technique for perception which is applicable to numerous different materials.
Mr. Liu Yang, who is a Ph.D. student with the Department and first author of the study, said, “Our method can be used as a powerful and universal tool to detect the spin accumulations in various materials systems. This means that developing better devices for quantum computers will become easier now that these phenomena can be directly observed in this way.”
Scientists are further planning to test their new method on more novel materials with novel spin properties.
The findings of the study were published in the scientific journal Nature Communications in June 2018.