Lifeboat Foundation

Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have developed the basic technology for a new “quantum modem”. It will allow users to connect to a future quantum internet that is based on the existing fibre optic network infrastructure.

Research

The first quantum revolution brought about semiconductor electronics, the laser and finally the internet. The coming, second quantum revolution promises spy-proof communication, extremely precise quantum sensors and quantum computers for previously unsolvable computing tasks. But this revolution is still in its infancy. A central research object is the interface between local quantum devices and light quanta that enable the remote transmission of highly sensitive quantum information. The Otto-Hahn group “Quantum Networks” at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching is researching such a “quantum modem”. The team has now achieved a first breakthrough in a relatively simple but highly efficient technology that can be integrated into existing fibre optic networks. The work is published this week in “Physical Review X”.

Advances in computing power over the decades have come thanks in part to our ability to make smaller and smaller transistors, a building block of electronic devices, but we are nearing the limit of the silicon materials typically used. A new technique for creating 2D oxide materials may pave the way for future high-speed electronics, according to an international team of scientists.

“One way we can make our transistors, our electronic devices, work faster is to shrink the distance electrons have to travel between point A and B,” said Joshua Robinson, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. “You can only go so far with 3D materials like silicon—once you shrink it down to a nanometer, its properties change. So there’s been a massive push looking at new materials, one of which are 2D materials.”

The team, led by Furkan Turker, graduate student in the Department of Materials Sciences, used a technique called confinement hetroepitaxy, or CHet, to create 2D oxides, materials with special properties that can serve as an atomically thin insulating layer between layers of electrically conducting materials.

In a new breakthrough, researchers at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with Ruhr University Bochum, have solved a problem that has caused quantum researchers headaches for years. The researchers can now control two quantum light sources rather than one. Trivial as it may seem to those uninitiated in quantum, this colossal breakthrough allows researchers to create a phenomenon known as quantum mechanical entanglement. This, in turn, opens new doors for companies and others to exploit the technology commercially.

Going from one to two is a minor feat in most contexts. But in the world of quantum physics, doing so is crucial. For years, researchers around the world have strived to develop stable quantum light sources and achieve the phenomenon known as quantum mechanical entanglement – a phenomenon, with nearly sci-fi-like properties, where two light sources can affect each other instantly and potentially across large geographic distances. Entanglement is the very basis of quantum networks and central to the development of an efficient quantum computer.

Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute published a new result in the highly esteemed journal Science, in which they succeeded in doing just that. According to Professor Peter Lodahl, one of the researchers behind the result, it is a crucial step in the effort to take the development of quantum technology to the next level and to “quantize” society’s computers, encryption, and the internet.

It actually makes a lot of sense from a computing standpoint.

If life is common in our Universe, and we have every reason to suspect it is, why do we not see evidence of it everywhere?

This is the essence of the Fermi Paradox, a question that has plagued astronomers and cosmologists almost since the birth of modern astronomy.

Continue reading “Alien Civilizations Could Use Black Holes as Massive Quantum Computers” »

(TQI) is the leading online resource dedicated exclusively to Quantum Computing.

Significantly reduces its advanced chip order with TSMC. The 3nm chip will be very expensive.

LCARS is the fictional computer operating system used by Starfleet starships in several Star Trek TV shows and films. The system is currently displayed in the animated comedy Trek series Lower Decks. Now, one intrepid fan has adapted the Lower Decks version of LCARS into a “crazy fan project:” Project RITOS.

RITOS is a webpage that recreates the LCARS system. It’s a fun little site to poke around on. But, since this is just a recreation, there’s no actual functionality you can incorporate onto your computer. As the RITOS About page states, you just “point & click & watch. There are no goals nor wrong thing to do here. It’s just a mindless site.”

It may be mindless, but it’s also a faithful recreation of the LCARS system as depicted not just in Star Trek: Lower Decks but also in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Users can click around into various displays that show crew quarters, a ship map of the Cerritos (the Federation starship in Lower Decks), JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) images, and a Sick Bay screen. There are plenty of fun things to click on and little easter eggs to uncover for dedicated Trek fans.

Leading scientists in the field predict that lithium niobate chips, which are extremely thin, will surpass silicon chips in light-based technologies. These chips have a wide range of potential applications, from detecting ripe fruit from a distance on Earth to guiding navigation on the Moon.

According to the scientists, the artificial crystal of lithium niobate is the preferred platform for these technologies because of its superior performance and advancements in manufacturing techniques.

RMIT University’s Distinguished Professor Arnan Mitchell and University of Adelaide’s Dr. Andy Boes led this team of global experts to review lithium niobate’s capabilities and potential applications in the journal Science.

Considering a “computer” as anything that processes information by taking an input and producing an output leads to the obvious questions, what kind of objects could perform computations? And how small can a computer be? As transistors approach the limit of miniaturisation, these questions are more than mere curiosities, their answers could form the basis of a new computing paradigm.

In a new paper in EPJ Plus (“Towards Single Atom Computing via High Harmonic Generation”) by Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, researcher Gerard McCaul, and his co-authors demonstrate that even one of the more basic constituents of matter — atoms — can act as a reservoir for computing where all input-output processing is optical.

“We had the idea that the capacity for computation is a universal property that all physical systems share, but within that paradigm, there is a great profusion of frameworks for how one would go about actually trying to perform computations,” McCaul says.