Readable Nuclear Spins Advance Quantum Computing

eldavojohn writes, "A University of Utah researcher and his team of German colleagues have shown that it is possible, using electronics, to read data stored as nuclear 'spins'. The lead researcher in the experiment was Dr. Christoph Boehme and his team's letter is available via Nature Physics (at a cost of $18 unless you are a subscriber). This is looking to be a large advance in quantum computing because prior to this, measuring the number of spins of a single phosphorus nucleus was very difficult." From the article: "The researchers used a piece of silicon crystal about 300 microns thick — about three times the width of a human hair — less than 3 inches long and about one-tenth of an inch wide. The silicon crystal was doped with phosphorus atoms. Phosphorus atoms were embedded in silicon because too many phosphorus atoms too close together would interact with each other so much that they couldn't store information. The concept is that the nuclear spin from one atom of phosphorus would store one qubit of information. The scientists used lithography to print two gold electrical contacts onto the doped silicon. Then they placed an extremely thin layer of silicon dioxide — about two billionths of a meter thick — onto the silicon between the gold contacts. As a result, the device's surface had tiny spots where the spins of phosphorus atoms could be detected."

Comments

Stick to a standard

[ndogg]

Please, stick to a standard when writing your articles--preferably metric. I want none of this crap of switching between the metric and English.

Re:Stick to a standard

[Anonymous Coward]

We gave up using imperial measures for scientific work many years ago. Even my sixty year old engineering lecturer scolded me when I used them, and I only did that because most of my experience so far has come from working on classic cars.

I suspect we only cling to them in day to day life because of their convenient size and divisors: a pint is a good measure of beer, and a quarter pound of ham will make a generous round of sandwiches. One has to get one's priorities in order.

haven't (can't, currently) read tfa, but...

[StandardDeviant]

how is this really news? Every approach to qc that I'm aware of uses spin setting/reading (via NMR in every case that's coming to mind). Bringing this back to the g33k/slashdot crew, check out the work done around 2001 to implement Shor's Algorithm at IBM (by Vandersypen et. al.) The wikipedia summary is a bit dense, but the original paper (cryptome appears to have a mirror) is a bit better.

(NB: I'm far from being an expert in this field, it's just something I was interested in a while back when I was wrapping up my chemistry bachelors. There could also certainly be something newsworthy in the present article that I can't presently see.)