Qbits unstable: May Limit Quantum Computing

Posted by timothy on Monday July 11, 2005 @06:29AM from the that-would-be-a-downer dept.

museumpeace writes "Netherlands Organiztion for Scientific Research provies a human-readable description of research into the stability of Qbits conducted at Leiden University. The bad news: " Much to their surprise they discovered that the coherence tends to spontaneously disappear, even without external influences." The whole story in physicist-readable form is in the June 17 Physical Review Letters by van Wezel, van den Brink, Zaanen [click abstract or huge PDF]. I am not buying any quantum computing startups 'til they nail this matter down...you can't build a computer if state information is going to evaportate in a second or less."

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If its good for a second... by embezzled · 2005-07-11 12:00 · Score: 2, Interesting

I am not a Quantum physicist, but surely if its stable for a second that should be long enough to copy it across onto conventional storage? You only need to look at Schrodinger's cat once to know its alive, anymore seems redundant.