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Mystery Molecule Leads to Quantum Computing Breakthrough

Scientists have discovered a new hybrid atom that might make it possible to build quantum computers. This data visualization shows an electron density map of the material. The funnel-shaped figure in the lower left is an arsenic atom, and the saucer-shaped image in the center is a map of an electron binding to various atoms. The yellow dots in the upper left-center are the electron in the quantum state.

The odd behavior of a molecule in an experimental silicon computer chip has led to a discovery that opens the door to quantum computing in semiconductors.

“Up to now large-scale quantum computing has been a dream,” says Gerhard Klimeck, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and associate director for technology for the national Network for Computational Nanotechnology. “This development may not bring us a quantum computer 10 years faster, but our dreams about these machines are now more realistic.”

The workings of traditional computers haven’t changed since they were room-sized behemoths 50 years ago; they still use bits of information, 1s and 0s, to store and process information. Quantum computers would harness the strange behaviors found in quantum physics to create computers that would carry information using quantum bits, or qubits. Computers would be able to process exponentially more information. If a traditional computer were given the task of looking up a person’s phone number in a telephone book, it would look at each name in order until it found the right number. Computers can do this much faster than people, but it is still a sequential task.

A quantum computer, however, could look at all of the names in the telephone book simultaneously. Quantum computers also could take advantage of the bizarre behaviors of quantum mechanics - some of which are counterintuitive even to physicists - in ways that are hard to fathom. For example, two quantum computers could, in concept, communicate instantaneously across any distance imaginable, even across solar systems.

Photo Credit: (Purdue University image/David Ebert)