There is a key aspect of quantum computing that you may not have thought about. They refer to observing certain quantum states without destroying them.
It would be helpful if we didn't have a quantum computer break down every second while calculations are made. Scientists have described a new technique for recording quantum non-demolition measurements.
The research involved objects that are relatively large in quantum computing terms, but tiny for us. They use mechanical motion to handle quantum magic and can be combined with other quantum systems.
The researchers write in their paper that their results open the door for performing even more complex quantum operations using mechanical systems.
The team put together a thin strip of high-quality sapphires, just under half a millimeter thick. A thin piezoelectrical transducer was used to excite acoustic waves, moving energy units such as photons, which can be put through quantum computing processes. This device is referred to as an acoustic resonator.
That was the beginning of the setup. The acoustic resonator was coupled with a qubit that could hold both a 1 and a 0 value, and upon which companies such as IBM have already built rudimentary quantum computers.
The team has a hybrid device that has an acoustic resonator chip on top of aqubit chip.
By making the status of the qubit dependent on the number of photons in the acoustic resonator, the scientists were able to read that number without interacting with them or transferring any energy.
They say it is similar to playing a theremin, a strange musical instrument that doesn't need to be touched to produce sound.
It was no easy task to put together the quantum computing equivalent, as quantum states are usually very short-lived and part of the innovation in this technique was the way these states were drawn out for longer. The team did this through the use of materials and through the use of a superconducting aluminum cavity.
They were able to extract the Parity measure from the mechanical quantum system.
The parity measure is crucial to a variety of quantum technologies, particularly when it comes to correcting errors in systems, and no computer can operate properly if it is regularly making errors.
A variety of important tools for manipulating and measuring motional quantum states can be made available by using circuit quantum acoustodynamics.
This is very high-level in terms of quantum physics, but the bottom line is that this is an important step forward in one of the technologies that could eventually provide a foundation for future quantum computers, particularly in terms of combining different types of systems together.
A hybrid qubit-resonator device such as the one described in this study could offer the best of both worlds: the computational capabilities of superconducting qubits and the stability of mechanical systems. Scientists have shown that information can be obtained from a device in a non-destructive way.
Once the task of measuring states has been refined and completed, these states need to be exploited and manipulated to be of real use.
Here we demonstrate the direct measurement of the number of phonon number distributions and the number of non-classical mechanical states.
These are some of the basic building blocks for constructing acoustic quantum memories.
The research has been published.
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