Quantum computer clears temperature hurdle
Until now, many quantum chips have only worked just above the temperature zero point. Now this barrier is moving a little higher.
If you want to operate a quantum computer, you have to shield it extremely well from the rest of the world: Even the smallest vibrations or collisions with air molecules destroy the fragile connection between the qubit computing units, to which quantum computers owe their superiority in some tasks. Initial prototypes such as the Sycamore quantum computer from Google are therefore housed in vacuum chambers and huge cooling units that cool the hardware down to minus 273.05 degrees. This means they operate at just 0.1 degrees above absolute zero.
Two research teams have now made quantum chips work at a temperature 10 to 15 times higher. They still require an extremely frosty minus 271 to 272 degrees. But now the cooling units can be greatly reduced in size, the groups report in "Nature". According to the researchers, cooling technology has so far been one of the major hurdles in the production of quantum chips.
Silicon chips in the quantum computer
The groups led by Andrew Dzurak from the University of New South Wales and Menno Veldhorst from Delft University of Technology have used an approach for their experiments that has so far been one of the underdogs in the race for the best quantum hardware. Instead of superconducting circuits (Google) or atomic hulls locked in magnetic fields (IBM), the researchers used the spins of electrons as the basis for their quantum computer.
This has the advantage that the chips can be made from silicon. They could therefore be comparatively easy to combine with conventional computer hardware in the future. So far, however, scientists have only been able to interconnect a few qubits constructed in this way. This is also the case in the current study, in which the groups only interconnected two silicon qubits at a time. Whether the lower cooling requirements will now help the technology achieve a breakthrough remains to be seen.
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