Scientists create first working model of a 2-qubit electronic quantum processor

A team led by Yale University researchers has successfully developed quantum processor based on microwave solid-state technology - similar to that found in computers and cell phones.

The new processor based on simple algorithms and is far from conventional, in that it uses the potent power of quantum mechanics to bring the dream of quantum computing a small but significant step closer to reality, the US National Science Foundation said in a release.

The work was supported in part by the Yale Center for Quantum and Information Physics (CQUIP), funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research and Division of Physics, and by the Army Research Office and National Security Agency. The findings were published online in the June 28 issue of Nature.

"This result is an important step forward towards all-electronic quantum information processing," said Wendy Fuller-Mora, programme director for the NSF Division of Materials Research/Condensed Matter Physics.

"Our experiment can only perform a few very simple quantum tasks, which have been demonstrated before using other systems such as photons, trapped ions, and nuclear magnetic resonance," said Robert Schoelkopf, a principal investigator and professor of applied physics and physics at Yale. "But this is the first time it has been done in an all-electronic device, which looks and feels much more like a regular microprocessor," he added.

The team used artificial atoms as quantum bits, or qubits, made from over a billion aluminum atoms in a superconducting electronic circuit. These qubits behave as single atoms. The difference is that the manufactured atoms are much larger and therefore easier to control than single atoms or other types of qubits.