Published in Physics World, 12 Apr 2010
Physicists in the US have used an optical “frequency comb” to reliably entangle a pair of atomic qubits. The breakthrough bodes well for practicable quantum computing because it allows for simpler manipulation of quantum states than in previous systems.
Quantum computing exploits the innate ambiguities of quantum physics to process certain calculations, such as searching or factorizing, much faster than any of today’s computers. Whereas conventional bits of information can take only the values 0 or 1, a quantum computer’s “qubits” exist in a mixed-up superposition of both. This uncertainty allows any number of qubits, N, to be lumped together – or “entangled”, in quantum speak – to represent a huge 2Nvalues, and then processed in parallel. Or, to put it another way, a quantum computer with just 10 entangled qubits could perform 1024 calculations at once. […]
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