Image Charge Detection to Measure Electron Spin. Is It Possible without Disrupting Quantum System?
New method for detecting quantum states of electrons
Key points…
+ Researchers in the Quantum Dynamics Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) devised a new method—called image charge detection—to detect electrons’ transitions to quantum states. Electrons can serve as quantum bits, the smallest unit of quantum information; these bits are foundational to larger computational systems. Quantum computers may be used to understand the mechanism of superconductivity, cryptography, artificial intelligence, among other applications.
“Currently, we can detect the quantum states of an ensemble of many electrons,” Konstantinov said. “The strong point of this new method is that we can scale down this technique to a single electron and to use it as a quantum bit.”
+ “There is a huge gap between controlling few quantum bits and building a quantum computer,” said Dr. Erika Kawakami, the lead author of a new study, published in Physical Review Letters with editor’s suggestion. “With the current state-of-art quantum bits, a quantum computer would need to be the size of a football field. Our new approach could potentially create a ten-centimeter chip.”
+ The researchers confirmed the excitation of quantum states by observing an electrostatic phenomenon called image charge. Like a reflection in a mirror, image charge precisely reflects the movement of electrons. If an electron moves further from the capacitor plate, then the image charge moves alongside it.
+ Moving forward, the researchers hope to use this image charge detection to measure an individual electron’s spin state, or quantum orbital state, without disrupting the integrity of the quantum systems.
Source: PHYS.ORG. Anna Aaronson, New method for detecting quantum states of electrons…
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