Nanotechnology Now

Our NanoNews Digest Sponsors
Heifer International



Home > Press > An Archimedes' screw for groups of quantum particles

Abstract:
Anyone who has tried to lead a group of tourists through a busy city knows the problem. How do you keep the group together when they are constantly jostled, held up and distracted by the hubbub around them?

An Archimedes' screw for groups of quantum particles

Singapore | Posted on November 19th, 2016

It's a problem the designers of quantum computers have to tackle. In some future quantum computers, information will be encoded in the delicate quantum states of groups of particles. These face jostling by noise and disorder within the materials of the processor. Now, an international team has proposed a scheme that could help protect groups of particles and enable them to move together without any getting lost or held up.

The proposal, published 17 November in Physical Review Letters, comes from researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Technical University of Crete, University of Oxford and Google. Their paper puts forward a scheme that can reliably transport quantum states of a few photons along a line of miniature quantum circuits. Simulations show that it should efficiently move a three-photon state from one circuit site to the next over dozens of sites: the particles jump together throughout and finally appear at the other end undisturbed, with no spreading out.

The scheme is based on the ideas of physicist David J. Thouless, who won half the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on topological effects in materials. Topological effects are to do with geometry, and their use in quantum computing can help protect fragile quantum states during processing.

One of Thouless' major contributions was the invention of 'topological pumping'. This works something like Archimedes' screw pump for water. The Ancient Greek's screw spins around, but the water within it travels in a straight line up a hill. "Even though the motion of the machine is cyclical, the motion of the particles is not, they move in a line," explains Jirawat Tangpanitanon, first author on the paper and a PhD student in the group of Dimitris Angelakis at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at NUS.

In the quantum scheme, the screw thread is not a physical structure but an oscillating external field imposed on the particles by electronic control over the device that contains them.

Angelakis started his group looking into topological pumping after others in 2015 demonstrated the effect for individual, non-interacting, particles. Angelakis, Tangpanitanon and Research Fellow Victor Bastidas wanted to find out if it would be possible to move groups of particles coherently too.

The answer is yes. What's more, unlike Archimedes' pump, which can only move water one way, the quantum particles can even be sent into reverse by changing the initial conditions. "It's like a moonwalk," jokes Tangpanitanon. It looks like everything should be moving forward, but instead the particles go backwards due to quantum effects.

Co-author Pedram Roushan - part of the Google group in Santa Barbara, California building superconducting circuits for quantum computing - and the team hopes to see the idea implemented in similar hardware. "This paper is almost a blueprint. We developed the proposal to match existing devices," says Angelakis, who is a Principal Investigator at CQT and a faculty member at the Technical University of Crete.

This research is supported by Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 3 (Grant No. MOE2012-T3-1-009), National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore and the Ministry of Education, Singapore under the Research Centres of Excellence programme. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) Grant Agreement No. 319286 Q-MAC and UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding EP/K038311/1.

####

For more information, please click here

Contacts:
Jenny Hogan


Researcher Contact:
Dimitris Angelakis
Principal Investigator, Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore
Assistant Professor, Technical University of Crete, Greece

+65 6601 1468

Copyright © Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore

If you have a comment, please Contact us.

Issuers of news releases, not 7th Wave, Inc. or Nanotechnology Now, are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.

Bookmark:
Delicious Digg Newsvine Google Yahoo Reddit Magnoliacom Furl Facebook

Related Links

Reference: Jirawat Tangpanitanon et al, 'Topological Pumping of Photons in Nonlinear Resonator Arrays', Physical Review Letters 117, 213603 (2016) :

Related News Press

News and information

Researchers develop artificial building blocks of life March 8th, 2024

How surface roughness influences the adhesion of soft materials: Research team discovers universal mechanism that leads to adhesion hysteresis in soft materials March 8th, 2024

Two-dimensional bimetallic selenium-containing metal-organic frameworks and their calcinated derivatives as electrocatalysts for overall water splitting March 8th, 2024

Curcumin nanoemulsion is tested for treatment of intestinal inflammation: A formulation developed by Brazilian researchers proved effective in tests involving mice March 8th, 2024

Physics

Nanoscale CL thermometry with lanthanide-doped heavy-metal oxide in TEM March 8th, 2024

Optically trapped quantum droplets of light can bind together to form macroscopic complexes March 8th, 2024

Scientists use heat to create transformations between skyrmions and antiskyrmions January 12th, 2024

Focused ion beam technology: A single tool for a wide range of applications January 12th, 2024

Possible Futures

Two-dimensional bimetallic selenium-containing metal-organic frameworks and their calcinated derivatives as electrocatalysts for overall water splitting March 8th, 2024

Curcumin nanoemulsion is tested for treatment of intestinal inflammation: A formulation developed by Brazilian researchers proved effective in tests involving mice March 8th, 2024

The Access to Advanced Health Institute receives up to $12.7 million to develop novel nanoalum adjuvant formulation for better protection against tuberculosis and pandemic influenza March 8th, 2024

Nanoscale CL thermometry with lanthanide-doped heavy-metal oxide in TEM March 8th, 2024

Chip Technology

New chip opens door to AI computing at light speed February 16th, 2024

HKUST researchers develop new integration technique for efficient coupling of III-V and silicon February 16th, 2024

Electrons screen against conductivity-killer in organic semiconductors: The discovery is the first step towards creating effective organic semiconductors, which use significantly less water and energy, and produce far less waste than their inorganic counterparts February 16th, 2024

NRL discovers two-dimensional waveguides February 16th, 2024

Quantum Computing

Researchers’ approach may protect quantum computers from attacks March 8th, 2024

Physicists ‘entangle’ individual molecules for the first time, hastening possibilities for quantum information processing: In work that could lead to more robust quantum computing, Princeton researchers have succeeded in forcing molecules into quantum entanglement December 8th, 2023

World’s first logical quantum processor: Key step toward reliable quantum computing December 8th, 2023

Optical-fiber based single-photon light source at room temperature for next-generation quantum processing: Ytterbium-doped optical fibers are expected to pave the way for cost-effective quantum technologies November 3rd, 2023

Discoveries

What heat can tell us about battery chemistry: using the Peltier effect to study lithium-ion cells March 8th, 2024

Researchers’ approach may protect quantum computers from attacks March 8th, 2024

High-tech 'paint' could spare patients repeated surgeries March 8th, 2024

Nanoscale CL thermometry with lanthanide-doped heavy-metal oxide in TEM March 8th, 2024

Announcements

What heat can tell us about battery chemistry: using the Peltier effect to study lithium-ion cells March 8th, 2024

Curcumin nanoemulsion is tested for treatment of intestinal inflammation: A formulation developed by Brazilian researchers proved effective in tests involving mice March 8th, 2024

The Access to Advanced Health Institute receives up to $12.7 million to develop novel nanoalum adjuvant formulation for better protection against tuberculosis and pandemic influenza March 8th, 2024

Nanoscale CL thermometry with lanthanide-doped heavy-metal oxide in TEM March 8th, 2024

Interviews/Book Reviews/Essays/Reports/Podcasts/Journals/White papers/Posters

Researchers develop artificial building blocks of life March 8th, 2024

How surface roughness influences the adhesion of soft materials: Research team discovers universal mechanism that leads to adhesion hysteresis in soft materials March 8th, 2024

Curcumin nanoemulsion is tested for treatment of intestinal inflammation: A formulation developed by Brazilian researchers proved effective in tests involving mice March 8th, 2024

Nanoscale CL thermometry with lanthanide-doped heavy-metal oxide in TEM March 8th, 2024

NanoNews-Digest
The latest news from around the world, FREE




  Premium Products
NanoNews-Custom
Only the news you want to read!
 Learn More
NanoStrategies
Full-service, expert consulting
 Learn More











ASP
Nanotechnology Now Featured Books




NNN

The Hunger Project