Qudits Beat Out Qubits with New Quantum Gate Research
Researchers build transistor-like gate for quantum information processing – with qudits
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ Purdue University researchers are among the first to build a gate – what could be a quantum version of a transistor, used in today’s computers for processing information – with qudits. Whereas qubits can exist only in superpositions of 0 and 1 states, qudits exist in multiple states, such as 0 and 1 and 2. More states mean that more data can be encoded and processed.
“This gate allows us to manipulate information in a predictable and deterministic way, which means that it could perform the operations necessary for certain quantum information processing tasks,” said Andrew Weiner, Purdue’s Scifres Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, whose lab specializes in ultrafast optics.
“A two-qudit gate, among the first of its kind, maximizes the entanglement of photons so that quantum information can be manipulated more predictably and reliably. (Purdue University image/Allison Rice)”
+ In quantum communication, less is more. “Photons are expensive in the quantum sense because they’re hard to generate and control, so it’s ideal to pack as much information as possible into each photon,” said Poolad Imany, a postdoctoral researcher in Purdue’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
+ The team achieved more entanglement with fewer photons by encoding one qudit in the time domain and the other in the frequency domain of each of the two photons. They built a gate using the two qudits encoded in each photon, for a total of four qudits in 32 dimensions, or possibilities, of both time and frequency. The more dimensions, the more entanglement.
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