每日科技报告 第70期Quantum Computing Closer: Hybrid Particles Discovered

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Quantum Computing Closer: Properties of Hybrid Light-Matter Particles Discovered

A team from Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy firedlight particles, or photons, into a tiny tower of semi-conductingmaterial. A photon collides with an electron confined in an evensmaller structure within the tower, and they oscillate briefly betweenthe states of light and matter, before the photon re-emerges.


The Cardiff team have conducted this experiment with both individualand pairs of photons. They showed that photon pairs increase thefrequency of the oscillation between light and matter over individualphotons. Their findings agree with theoretical predictions first madein the 1960s.
The findings have long-term implications for information andcommunications technology. It may one day be possible to build logicalsystems based on the interactions of these particles -- also known asquantum computing. As the particles move faster and use less energythan conventional electronic computer components, this would lead tomore efficient processing.
However, the technical problems involved are still extremelydifficult. The Cardiff team used a semiconductor tube of 1.8micrometers in diameter (a micrometer is a thousandth of a millimetre).It was kept at a temperature of around -263ºC (ten degrees aboveabsolute zero) and the photons were trapped inside a semiconductor tubeonly for around 10 picoseconds (a picosecond is one trillionth of asecond).
Professor Wolfgang Langbein, who led the team with Dr JacekKasprzak, now at Néel Institute, CNRS Grenoble, said: "This interactioncan produce a steady stream of photons, and can also be the basis forsingle photon logic -- which requires the minimum amount of energy todo logic. In the long term, there are implications in a number ofareas, including computing, telecommunications and cryptography devices.
"To use this technology in real computing devices will take asignificant improvement of the low-temperature properties and ideallyits translation to room temperature. At the moment we have no clearconcept how to do this -- but it is not impossible."
The group's findings have just been published in Nature Materials. The world-class semiconducting structures used in the experiments were developed at the University of Würzburg in Germany.

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