acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

ACM TechNews

Progress in Quantum Computing, Qubit by Qubit


View as: Print Mobile App Share:
Quantum computing

Researchers led by Marko Lon?ar at Harvard's SEAS have managed to control the rate of emission of photons from diamond nanoposts, an important advance toward quantum computing.

Credit: Courtesy of Harvard SEAS

Harvard University researchers have developed a method for capturing light in tiny diamond pillars embedded in silver, releasing a stream of single photons at a controllable rate, technology that could lead to the development of quantum networks.

"We can make the emission of photons faster, which will allow us to do more processing per second--for example, more computations--in the future quantum network," says Harvard professor Marko Loncar.

The researchers say the technology could lead to the development of scalable, on-chip quantum networks. "The color centers in diamond are very interesting as qubits for quantum information processing, where they can be used as memory to store information," Loncar says.

The researchers fabricated diamond posts that contain negatively charged nitrogen vacancy centers, which can absorb light and hold its energy for a given amount of time, finally releasing it in the form of photons. The device also functions at room temperature, which is required for practical computing applications, and the nanostructured chips are fully scalable.

From Harvard University
View Full Article

Abstracts Copyright © 2011 Information Inc. External Link, Bethesda, Maryland, USA 


 

No entries found

Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account