{"id":10691,"date":"2021-04-13T16:01:42","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T15:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=10691"},"modified":"2024-09-04T20:07:55","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T19:07:55","slug":"molecules-respond-light-build-qubit-systems-quantum-computers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/molecules-respond-light-build-qubit-systems-quantum-computers\/10691\/","title":{"rendered":"Using molecules that respond to light to build qubit systems for quantum computers"},"content":{"rendered":"
Light can be used to operate quantum information processing systems, such as quantum computers, quickly and efficiently.<\/p>\n
Researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Chimie ParisTech\/CNRS have significantly advanced the development of molecule-based materials suitable for use as light-addressable fundamental quantum units.<\/p>\n
The research, which has been published in the journal Nature Communications, <\/em>presents a nuclear-spin-containing dimeric europium(III) molecule as light-addressable qubit.<\/p>\n This team has been led by Professor Mario Ruben at KIT’s IQMT and Strasbourg\u00b4s European Center for Quantum Sciences \u2013 CESQ and Dr Philippe Goldner at \u00c9cole nationale sup\u00e9rieure de chimie de Paris (Chimie ParisTech\/CNRS).<\/p>\n The ability to process information is crucial for many areas of scientific research, such as drug development and climate forecasts. This process is currently done using digital computers, where the state of a bit is either 0 or 1. This limits the performance of\u00a0 and it can be complicated to handle complex problems related to real-world tasks.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, quantum computers use quantum bits (qubits) to process information. Qubits have many states between 0 and 1 simultaneously due to a special quantum mechanical property referred to as quantum superposition, meaning data can be processed in parallel. Therefore, the potential computing power of quantum computers is much greater than digital computers.<\/p>\n “In order to develop practically applicable quantum computers, the superposition states of a qubit should persist for a sufficiently long time. Researchers speak of \u2018coherence lifetime\u2019,” explained Professor Mario Ruben, head of the Molecular Materials research group at KIT’s Institute of Nanotechnology<\/a> (INT). “However, the superposition states of a qubit are fragile and are disturbed by fluctuations in the environment, which leads to decoherence, i.e., shortening of the coherence lifetime.”<\/p>\n In order to maintain the superposition state long enough for computational operations, isolating a qubit from the noisy environment is conceivable. Nuclear spin levels in molecules can be used to construct superposition states with long coherence lifetimes because nuclear spins are weakly coupled to the environment, shielding the superposition states of a qubit from any disturbing external influences.<\/p>\n To build a quantum computer, many qubits are required. Molecules are ideal qubit systems as they can be arranged in large numbers as identical scalable units and can be addressed with light to perform qubit operations. As well as this, the physical properties of molecules, such as emission and\/or magnetic properties, can be tailored by changing their structures using chemical design principles.<\/p>\n