Diamond Crystals Could Create a Quantum Computer Internet
What’s the Latest Development?
Based on recent findings, scientists in the Netherlands believe that diamond crystals may one day form what amounts to an Internet connecting far flung quantum computers. The scientists have reported in Nature that “they have entangled information kept in pieces of diamond 3 metres apart, so that measuring the state of one quantum bit (qubit) instantly fixes the state of the other – a step necessary for exchanging quantum information over large distances.” To entangle qubits in separate pieces of diamond, the team uses lasers with a photon at temperatures of 10 kelvin.
What’s the Big Idea?
Computing speed has roughly doubled every 18 months since the middle 1960s but approaching physical limitations on the atom itself have thrown the stability of this trend into question. Quantum computers, which would process and transfer massive amounts of information instantly over enormous distances, could represent the next phase in computing technology. “Linked qubits could in theory zip through calculations that, on a classical computer, would take longer than the age of the Universe. Entangling them over a distance might allow unbreakable communication: for example, if the sender and the receiver of a message possess two sets of qubits that together provide an encryption key.”
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