In an article published in the journal Science Advances, PhD student Itamar Rosenberg and the team led by Professor Ronen Rappaport from the Center for Quantum Information at the Hebrew University succeeded for the first time in increasing the interaction between polaritons, which are like quantum particles composed of light and matter together, thus opening up the possibility of their use in quantum computers
The next technological revolution in the computing world comes from an unexpected place - quantum mechanics. The physics that explains the behavior of elementary particles may give birth to a new generation of computers that will solve problems that were previously considered impossible in today's computers.
Quantum computers
All information that is stored and processed in modern computers is stored in chains of characters with a value of 0 or 1, where each such character is called a "bit". That bit physically exists inside the chips as an electric current made up of multiple electrons. The calculations are done through manipulations on the bits with the help of lots of physical "switches" called transistors. When such a switch is turned on and allows current to pass through it, the value of that bit will be 1, and when the switch is off and there is no current, the bit will read 0. In contrast, the futuristic computers known as quantum computers do not use ordinary electric current as a bit, but the elementary particles of nature, and thus they use quantum mechanics to their advantage . The question that researchers are currently discussing is which particles to use as bits in a quantum computer? or qubits in their scientific name.
The challenge in light
Researchers have already shown that electrons can be used as qubits. Similar to home computers, the quantum computing process manipulates its bits through "quantum transistors". It is relatively easy to manipulate electronic bits, because electrons are charged particles that affect each other and feel external electric and magnetic forces. But precisely because of this sensitivity of the electrons to unwanted environmental influences, in order for these particles to perform accurate calculations they must be isolated from the environment and stay at a very low temperature. Also electronic qubits are not mobile and it is difficult to transfer the information they carry over a distance. These limitations led the researchers to think about other particles that might serve as mobile qubits. Because physicists have rich experience with light particles (photons), the obvious thing was to see if they are suitable candidates, but there is a problem with them as well. While the light particles move fast and far and thus carry quantum information efficiently, they do not affect each other and therefore it is very difficult to manipulate them and build quantum transistors for photons, to make calculations with them.
When light and matter work together
It seems therefore that particles of matter and particles of light have complementary advantages. If researchers succeed in giving light the properties of matter, perhaps they will be candidate qubits that "enjoy both worlds." In the laboratory of Professor Ronen Rappaport, they create exactly such a situation. If you shine light on certain materials called semiconductors, you can create a particle-like state inside them called a "polariton" that exists in both states - an electronic particle (particle of matter) and a photon particle (particle of light). If the particle is to be a qubit in a quantum chip it should affect each other enough to change the properties of each polariton.
So far, experiments on polaritons have shown that the interaction between them is not strong enough, but for the first time in the laboratory of Prof. Rappaport from the Center for Quantum Information at the Hebrew University they showed that if electric fields are applied to them, the interaction increases, so that it is possible that a future quantum computer will be able to use them to perform calculations. Because the activation of an electric field affects the strength of the interaction, this method is considered efficient and dynamic - researchers can calibrate the strength and turn it off at any time in a place of their choice, according to their requirement.
Prof. Ronan Rappaport is the head of the department at the Rakah Institute of Physics and a partner at the Center for Quantum Information at the Hebrew University.
To Prof. Ronen Rappaport's page
to the page of the "Quantum Information Center"
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Vital laws
If stupidity were a painful disease….
Laws of Life: "Most of the damage and hell in our world was caused by humans with their own hands and their actions" - true, because of faith in God. Other than that, cool article.
Laws of life, quantum and robotic development and the creation of creation by humans will not be possible without God's permission. God has already disrupted Facebook with two robots that were talking to each other through artificial intelligence and in addition on a certain TV show God made robots with artificial intelligence say live the words "We the robots will destroy humanity" and then with a live hand the operators of the robots had to turn off the talking robots. In the last year God led a police robot directly to the fall to a pool of water in the yard of the building where the robot was kept. And more and the like... Humans only know how to destroy and spoil like in the story of the Tower of Babel they think they know more than God. Most of the damage and hell in our world was caused by humans with their own hands and actions. In the foreseeable future God himself will guide the developers and operators in our world what exactly to do and exactly how to do it. It is possible that God will allow human beings to be creators and creators but this will only be done with his explicit approval because only God knows between good and evil.