How exactly are quantum computers different from regular computers? Can the whole idea of data transmission and manipulation be totally reimagined? Can data be stored forever? But most importantly can it fit into your pockets?
Well, this can soon be possible as researchers at the University of California, Irvene suggest. In addition to this, the ripple effect that this research has caught on can change the very way we transfer information.
Well during the past week, UCI physicist Jing Xia has taken the concept of quantum computing not only closer to reality but has also changed how electrical conductivity can be perceived. But, how does this affect the current affairs regarding memory and data analytics? The answer here lies in the early days of data communications. Data communications is the transfer of data (a digital bit stream or a digitized analog signal) over a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication channel. Examples of such channels are copper wires, optical fibers, wireless communication channels, storage media and computer buses. The data are represented as an electromagnetic signal, such as an electrical voltage. The key point to note is that data communication is the transfer of a digital bit stream i.e., 0’s or 1’s.Commonly known as bits. The bits in the data stream are a result variation in electrical voltage which is basically the charge created during the flow of electrons through a conductor. However quantum computing does not perceive data as bits, a quantum computer works with particles that can be in superposition. Rather than representing bits — such particles would represent qubits, which can take on the value 0, or 1, or both simultaneously.
Despite this being the case of how data is naturally understood to be, Xia and his colleagues, who are also probing the potential for conductive particles that move hundreds of times faster than electrons as well as ways to make hyper-powerful quantum computers more stable and useful.
In conventional electronics, electrons act as message carriers, flowing through circuits at a speed of approximately one million meters per second (to be sure, electromagnetic energy itself flows faster still).
But Xia and his colleagues are exploring the possibility of abandoning electrons completely and instead using different kinds of particles to transmit messages. One of those particles is the Dirac fermion, which can flow at 300 million meters per second — close to the speed of light. He goes on to show that bringing bismuth and nickel into contact can create an exotic type of 2D superconductor that uses another particle called a Majorana fermion as the message carrier — and demonstrates they can be transmitted with no dissipation or heat generation and since there is no dissipation or heat generation the data can be transferred with minimum losses and can be stored in a memory device for a very long period of time or maybe forever?
In another paper published in the past month, it is demonstrated that a material called samarium hexaboride can be stabilized in a 2D-surface state and be used to transmit a signal-carrying current made of Dirac fermions
“The Majorana fermion can help us realize a very robust quantum computer” by insulating the computer from outside interference, Xia said.
“They can be used for quantum computing as qubits, but it won’t be interfered with or perturbed by the environment,” Xia said. “It’s very robust.”
Previously, the material could only be used for that purpose when cooled to a super-frigid -200 degrees Celsius.
But in their new experiment, Xia and colleagues managed to bring the temperature closer to -30 degrees Celsius.
That’s already the temperature of Alaska in winter, that’s a big step towards building a room-temperature topologically protected quantum computer
Yet, one thing has remained unclear what are these 2D conductors and how are they pivotal in the study of quantum computers and what applications would they bring in the field of memory storage and data analytics?.
A novel material called CGT could be used to manufacture super-fast computer memory storage devices with the thickness of a single atom. Super-thin memory storage is just one of the potential applications arising from the synthesizing these 2D conductors Interest in so-called 2D materials has been red-hot following recent breakthroughs in the study of graphene, an atom-thin layer of carbon 100 times stronger than steel and better at conducting both heat and electricity than copper.
Existing computer memory storage devices, however, rely on components with magnetic properties — and graphene isn’t magnetic. However it is demonstrated in a paper published in the journal Nature that a single-atom layer film of CGT, which stands for chromium germanium telluride, has many of the same qualities of graphene, but is also magnetic. That opens the door to using CGT to create 2D computer memory devices.
“It would be very, very fast memory, and energy-efficient memory,” Xia said. “It would store information forever, whether or not there’s a power source. And it would be 2D material, so it would be the thickness of an atom.”
So, In conclusion, Yes, Quantum computers are soon to be a reality and Yes, It is very likely that the computing power billions times to that which currently exits can fit into the back pocket of your jeans.
– sYzYgY~
Thawsome 