Physicists created a strange phase of matter by firing a laser pulse at atoms inside a quantum computer.
The new phase of matter, created by using lasers to jiggle a strand of 10 ytterbium ion, enables scientists to store information in a far more error-protected way, thus opening the path to quantum computers The paper outlining the findings was published in the journal Nature.
The inclusion of a theoretical "extra" time dimension is a completely different way of thinking about phases of matter, according to the lead author. I've been working on these theories for over five years and seeing them come to fruition in experiments is exciting.
There is a time crystal inside the quantum computer.
Physicists didn't set out to create a phase with a theoretical extra time dimensions, nor were they looking for a method to enable better quantum data storage. They wanted to create a new phase of matter that was beyond the standard solid, liquid, gas.
The new phase of the H1 quantum processor consists of 10 ytterbium ion in a vacuum chamber that is controlled by lasers.
The basis of all calculations are 0s and 1s. qubits can be used in a state of 0 or 1 on a quantum computer. There are just about all of the similarities. The laws of the quantum world allow qubits to exist in a combination of the 0 and 1 states until they collapse into either a 0 or a 1.
The key to the power of quantum computing is the strange behavior that allows qubits to link together, a process that Albert Einstein dubbed " spooky action at a distance." If there is a change in one particle, it will cause a change in the other even if they are thousands of miles apart. It gives quantum computers the ability to perform multiple calculations at the same time.
Because Qubits don't just interact and get entangled with each other, they also interact with the outside environment, which causes them to lose their quantum properties.
Even if you keep all the atoms under tight control, they can lose their quantumness by talking to their environment, heating up or interacting with things that they didn't plan on.
Physicists looked to a set of phases called topological phases to get around the effects of decoherence. It is possible to weave information across the singular, static positions of qubits into the dynamic motions and interactions of the entire material. The phase is much less likely to lose its information as a result of this.
The breaking of physical symmetries is a hallmark of moving from one phase to another. The physical laws of water are the same in every direction. If you cool water enough so that it becomes ice, its molecule will pick points along a lattice to arrange themselves across. The spatial symmetry of the water has been broken due to the water molecule preferring points in space to empty ones.
With the new phase of a quantum computer, the symmetry is not being broken across space, but time.
A breakthrough for the quantum internet has been achieved.
The physicists wanted to break the time symmetry of the ion at rest and impose their own time symmetry, where the qubits remain the same across certain intervals in time.
The experiment didn't work. The regular laser pulse amplified the noise from outside the system less than a second after it was turned on.
The researchers realized that they needed to knot more than one time symmetry into the ion strand in order to create a more robust phase. They decided to find a pulse pattern that didn't repeat frequently but still had some kind of higher symmetry across time.
The next number of the sequence is created when they add the previous two. Their new pulse train ran by combining the two pulse that came before, rather than using a simple periodic laser pulse.
Like a quasicrystal in space, this time symmetry was ordered without ever repeating. It's just like a quasicrystal, but with a higher-dimensional pattern on a lower-dimensional surface. A piece of a five-dimensional lattice is projected onto a two-dimensional surface. Two theoretical time symmetries are flattened into a single physical one when we look at the Fibonacci pulse pattern.
The system gets a bonus symmetry from a lack of extra time dimensions. Even though it may be impossible in reality, the system appears to be a material with two dimensions of time.
The system was protected from data loss when the team tested it. They created a phase that was immune to the effects of decoherence for a long period of time.
There is a complicated evolution that cancels out all the errors that live on the edge. The edge stays quantum-mechanically coherent a lot longer than you would think.
Although the physicists achieved their goal, one hurdle remains to making their phase a useful tool for quantum programmers: Integrating it with the computational side of quantum computing so that it can be input with calculations.
We need to find a way to hook it into the calculations. We're working on that problem.
It was originally published on Live Science
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