Communications of the ACM
Discovery Opens New Path to Superfast Quantum Computing
Researchers at Washington State University have used a super-cold cloud of atoms to perceive a quantum phenomenon that opens a new experimental path to quantum computing.
Credit: Anterovium/Fotolia
Washington State University (WSU) researchers have used a super-cold cloud of atoms that behaves like a single atom to perceive a quantum phenomenon predicted six decades ago, opening a new experimental path to potentially powerful quantum computing.
About 1 million atoms of rubidium were cooled to 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, causing them to cohere into a Bose-Einstein condensate after experiencing a phase change. Once the atoms acted in unison, they could be induced to display coherent superradiant behavior predicted by Princeton University's Robert Dicke in 1954.
"This large group of atoms...behaves as one big super-atom," says WSU physicist Peter Engels. "Therefore it magnifies the effects of quantum mechanics." Engels notes researchers created the superradiant state only once before, using a more complex setup that involved coupling to photon fields. The WSU experiment's results are more easily observable, giving researchers a tool for testing assumptions and changes in the quantum physical space, Engels says.
"We have found an implementation of the system that allows us to go in the lab and actually test the predictions of the Dicke model, and some extensions of it as well, in a system that is not nearly as complicated as people always thought it has to be for the Dicke physics," he says.
From WSU News
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