Science & Research

More Than Quantum Computing: Applications of Quantum Bits Extend to Search for Dark Matter

Wright Lab assistant professor David Moore, along with three colleagues from other institutions, recently proposed a novel idea of using trapped electrons and ions—technologies that are being developed as qubits for quantum computation—as ultra-sensitive particle detectors that may be able to enhance the search for the nature of dark matter, neutrinos, new forces, and more.Trapped charged particles, such as ions or electrons, are among the most studied systems for developing quantum computers (in parallel with superconducting qubits, which are under development at the Yale Quantum Institute).

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Quantum Information Disappears at the Atomic Scale, Brookhaven and Princeton U Scientists Look to Find Sources of Loss

Engineers and materials scientists studying superconducting quantum information bits (qubits)—a leading quantum computing material platform based on the frictionless flow of paired electrons—have collected clues hinting at the microscopic sources of qubit information loss. This loss is one of the major obstacles in realizing quantum computers capable of stringing together millions of qubits to run demanding computations. Such large-scale, fault-tolerant systems could simulate complicated molecules for drug development, accelerate the discovery of new materials for clean energy, and perform other tasks that would be impossible or take an impractical amount of time (millions of years) for today’s most powerful supercomputers.

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Quantum Correlations at the Macro-Scale: Can We See Them?

One of the most fundamental features of quantum physics is Bell nonlocality: the fact that the predictions of quantum mechanics cannot be explained by any local (classical) theory. This has remarkable conceptual consequences and far-reaching applications in quantum information. However, in our everyday experience, macroscopic objects seem to behave according to the rules of classical physics, and the correlations we see are local. Is this really the case, or can we challenge this view? In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, scientists from the University of Vienna and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have shown that it is possible to fully preserve the mathematical structure of quantum theory in the macroscopic limit. This could lead to observations of quantum nonlocality at the macroscopic scale.

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