Scientists have found a way for diamond crystals to store quantum information.
Atoms are manipulated inside the diamonds so that they hold information long enough for quantum memory, encoding information in states that are both 0 and 1 at the same time, not the strings of 0s and 1s calculated by conventional computers.
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| flickr.com/Jennifer Dickert |
The perfect diamonds for these are not from Harry Winston, Tiffany & Co., or the type to sell to buyers like World Jeweler. Flawed diamonds work best.
David Awschalom of University of California, Santa Barbara reports, “Oddly enough, perfection may not be the way to go. We want to build in defects.”
Nitrogen stands as one of the most common defects in diamonds, turning the stone yellow. When a nitrogen atom is next to an empty spot in the carbon crystal, the atom gives off an extra electron that moves into that spot. Several years ago, scientists have learned that using microwave energy can change the spin of those extra electrons, and have put them to work as quantum bits, or qubits.
Awschalom discovered how to connect the electron spin to the spin of the nearest nitrogen’s nucleus, providing a more stable way to store information. Triggered by magnetic fields, this transfer happens very fast at about 100 nanoseconds.
Diamond memory works at room temperature. The electron spins within the diamond can be manipulated and measured by shining a laser light into the diamond. This could provide high potential for scientists to use diamonds for developing nanophotonic systems to move and store information in packets of light.
Quantum memory isn’t forever, but it does last for quite some time by quantum standards. The nuclear spin stays coherent, or stable, for a little more than a millisecond, with potential to last up to seconds.”
Sebastian Loth, physicist at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, clarifies, “You can only do your quantum magic as long as you have coherence. If you have a lifetime of milliseconds, that lets you do millions of operations.”
Source: Science News
