Monday, July 25, 2022

150,000 spin Qubits Printed on a Chip

Amazing stuff!

"... Now scientists have fabricated more than 150,000 silicon-based qubits on a chip that they may be able to link together with light, to help form powerful quantum computers connected by a quantum Internet. ...
Currently quantum computers are noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) platforms, meaning their qubits number up to a few hundred at most. To prove useful for practical applications, future quantum computers will likely need thousands of qubits to help compensate for errors.
There are many different types of qubits under development, such as superconducting circuits, electromagnetically trapped ions, and even frozen neon. Recently scientists have discovered that so-called spin qubits manufactured in silicon may prove especially promising for quantum computing.
“Silicon spins are some of nature’s very best natural qubits,” ...
Now, for the first time, researchers have detected single spins optically in qubits in silicon. Such optical access to spin qubits suggests it may one day be possible to use light to “have qubits entangling with each other across a chip, or across a data center as easily as if they’re side by side,” ...
The new spin qubits are based on radiation damage centers—defects within silicon created using ion implantation or irradiation with high-energy electrons. Specifically, they are T centers, each comprised of two carbon atoms, one hydrogen atom, and an unpaired electron.
Each T center features an unpaired electron spin and a hydrogen nuclear spin, each of which can serve as a qubit. ..."

From the abstract:
"The global quantum internet will require long-lived, telecommunications-band photon–matter interfaces manufactured at scale. Preliminary quantum networks based on photon–matter interfaces that meet a subset of these demands are encouraging efforts to identify new high-performance alternatives. Silicon is an ideal host for commercial-scale solid-state quantum technologies. It is already an advanced platform within the global integrated photonics and microelectronics industries, as well as host to record-setting long-lived spin qubits. Despite the overwhelming potential of the silicon quantum platform, the optical detection of individually addressable photon–spin interfaces in silicon has remained elusive. In this work, we integrate individually addressable ‘T centre’ photon–spin qubits in silicon photonic structures and characterize their spin-dependent telecommunications-band optical transitions. These results unlock immediate opportunities to construct silicon-integrated, telecommunications-band quantum information networks."

150,000 Qubits Printed on a Chip - IEEE Spectrum

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