A current supercomputer, the IBM Roadrunner, was the world's first petaflop computer. Breakthroughs in stable quantum computing could lead to the next generation of super fast computers. (Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory)
(UPI) -- A fragile quantum computing state remained stable for 39 minutes at room temperature, setting a quantum memory world record and heralding a new phase in super fast quantum computing.
An international team led by Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University, Canada, encoded "Quibits" of information on a silicon system, and they remained coherent for 39 minutes at room temperature. This is 100 times longer than previous records, marking a milestone in keeping a quantum systems stable.
"This opens the possibility of truly long-term storage of quantum information at room temperature," Thewalt said.
Unlike usual computing systems, which store data using 1s and 0s, in a quantum system "qubits" are stored such that they can be both 1s and 0s at the same time -- enabling them to perform multiple calculations simultaneously.
But typical quantum devices tend to lose their memory in less than a second -- or up to a few minutes at temperatures reaching absolute zero.
In this new experiment, scientists encoded information into the nuclei of phosphorus atoms held in a sliver of purified silicon. Magnetic fields were used to spin the nuclei and create the qubits of memory.
The sample was prepared close to absolute zero, roughly -269C, and as the temperature was raised to room temperature, superposition states survived for 39 minutes.
"Having such robust, as well as long-lived, qubits could prove very helpful for anyone trying to build a quantum computer," said co-author Stephanie Simmons of Oxford University. "39 minutes may not seem very long. But these lifetimes are many times longer than previous experiments."
[BBC]
