Australian researchers propose a new kind of quantum computer

07 Sep 2017

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Researchers in Australia have found a new way of building quantum computers using a 'flip flop' chip design.

The chip will dramatically cut costs of producing the computers at scale. Quantum computers harness the strange ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at a time, which could solve problems that are too complex or time-consuming for current state of the art computers.

It could also make for machines that cannot be hacked with conventional methods of attack.

Quantum computers operate on the basis of a circuit not only being 'on' or 'off' but occupying a state that is both 'on' and 'off' at the same time. This strange behaviour can be explained on the basis of the laws of quantum mechanics that allow very small particles to exist in multiple 'superposition' states until they are observed or disturbed. This is similar to a coin spun in the air that cannot be said to be in a 'heads' or 'tails' state until it lands and settles in one state.

While conventional computers have 'bits' made up of zeros and ones, a quantum computer has 'qubits', which can have values of zero or one or both simultaneously.

"This design provides a realisable blueprint for scalable spin-based quantum computers in silicon," the authors write in the paper, published today in the journal Nature Communications.

The paper adds to Bruce Kane's well-known 1998 quantum computer proposal in Nature, which proposes qubits stored as properties of atoms, and computer operations are performed by applying an electric field. The team has proposed what it calls "flip-flop qubits", where a phosphorous atom sits in a silicon semiconductor. Both the electron and the nucleus have intrinsic properties called "spin" that can assume values called "up" and "down". The flip-flop qubit's ones and zeroes become stored with an electric field causing the electron and nucleus' spins to snap into opposite states, one up and the other down, or vice versa.

The project was led by professor Andrea Morello and lead author Guilherme Tosi, of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney.

Dr Morello said: 'It's a brilliant design, and like many such conceptual leaps, it's amazing no-one had thought of it before.

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