Synthetic Diamonds and Quantum Computing, No Need for Refrigeration?
Quantum computing is right around the corner, but cooling is a problem. What are the options?
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ Quantum computing is coming on fast, with potential use cases across industries. But nothing is happening at scale without a better cooling solution. One option on the table: synthetic diamonds.
The current operating temperature of quantum computers is 0.015 Kelvin or -273C or -460F. That is the only way to slow down the movement of atoms, so a “qubit” can hold a value.
+ There have been some creative solutions proposed for this problem, such as the “nanofridge,” which builds a circuit with an energy gap dividing two channels: a superconducting fast lane, where electrons can zip along with zero resistance, and a slow resistive (non-superconducting) lane. Only electrons with sufficient energy to jump across that gap can get to the superconductor highway; the rest are stuck in the slow lane. This has a cooling effect.
+ The cooling of qubits is the stumbling block. Diamonds seem to offer a solution, one that could quantum computing into the mainstream. The impurities in synthetic diamonds can be manipulated, and the state of od qubit can held at room temperature, unlike other potential quantum computing systems, and NV-center qubits (described above) are long-lived. There are still many issues to unravel to make quantum computers feasible, but today, unless you have a refrigerator at home that can operate at near absolute-zero, hang on to that laptop.
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