Austria

U. Innsbruck Research Opens up New Possibilities for Using Levitated Particles as Sensors

Sensing with levitated nanoparticles has so far been limited by the precision of position measurements. Researchers at the Department of Experimental Physics of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, have now demonstrated a new technique that boosts the efficiency with which the position of a sub-micron levitated object is detected. The new technique demonstrated by Tracy Northup, a professor at the University of Innsbruck, and her team resolves this limitation by replacing the laser beam with the light of the particle reflected by a mirror.

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July 4, 2022

The Physical Speed Limit of Computers Is…

The maximum speed of signal transmission in microchips is about one petahertz (one million gigahertz), which is about 100,000 times faster than current transistors. Whether computer chips of this maximum speed can ever actually be produced is, however, questionable.

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March 26, 2022

Researchers Continue the Quest for the Perfect Qubit

Quantum computers promise great advances in many fields – from cryptography to the simulation of protein folding. Yet, which physical system works best to build the underlying quantum bits is still an open question. Unlike regular bits in your computer, these so-called qubits cannot only take the values 0 and 1, but also mixtures of the two. While this potentially makes them very useful, they also become very unstable.

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July 2, 2021

On Point With Qubit's Picks