A University of Pittsburgh-led team has created a single-electron transistor that provides a building block for new, more powerful computer memories, advanced electronic materials, and the basic components of quantum computers.
The researchers report in Nature Nanotechnology that the transistor's central component -- an island only 1.5 nanometers in diameter -- operates with the addition of only one or two electrons. That capability would make the transistor important to a range of computational applications, from ultradense memories to quantum processors, powerful devices that promise to solve problems so complex that all of the world's computers working together for billions of years could not crack them.
Researchers Succeed in Quantum Teleportation of Light Waves - Rebecca Boyle
The results pave the way for high-speed, high-fidelity transmission of information, according to Elanor Huntington, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia who was part of the study.
“If we can do this, we can do just about any form of communication needed for any quantum technology,” she said in a news release.
Instead of using ones and zeroes, quantum computers store data as qubits, which can represent one and zero simultaneously. This superposition enables the computers to solve multiple problems at once. The new, faster teleportation process means scientists can move blocks of this quantum information around within a computer or across a network, Huntington said.
IBM Launches Five-Year Effort To Develop Quantum Computing - Rebecca Boyle
IBM is breathing new life into a quantum computing research division at its Thomas J. Watson Research Center, reports New York Times. The computer giant has hired alumni from promising quantum computing programs at Yale and the University of California-Santa Barbara, both of which made quantum leaps in the past year using standard superconducting material.
Groups at both universities have been using rhenium or niobium on a semiconductor surface and cooling the system to absolute zero so that it exhibits quantum behavior. As the Times reports, the method relies on standard microelectronics manufacturing tech, which could make quantum computers easier and cheaper to make.
