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Researchers Send Information Using a Single Particle of Light (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: According to research published Thursday in Science, physicists at Princeton University have designed a device that allows a single electron to pass its quantum information to a photon in what could be a big breakthrough for silicon-based quantum computers. The device designed by the Princeton researchers is the result of five years of research and works by trapping an electron and a photon within a device built by HRL laboratories, which is owned by Boeing and General Motors. It is a semi-conductor chip made from layers of silicon and silicon-germanium, materials that are inexpensive and already widely deployed in consumer electronics. Across the top of this wafer of silicon layers were laid a number of nanowires, each smaller than the width of a human hair, which were used to deliver energy to the chip. This energy allowed the researchers to trap an electron in between the silicon layers of the chip in microstructures known as quantum dots. The researchers settled on photons as the medium of exchange between electrons since they are less sensitive to disruption from their environment and could potentially be used to carry quantum information between quantum chips, rather than within the circuits on a single quantum chip. The ability to scale up this device would mean that photons could be used to pass quantum information from electron to electron in order to form the circuits for a quantum computer. "We now have the ability to actually transmit the quantum state to a photon," said Xiao Mi, a graduate student in Princeton's Department of Physics. "This has never been done before in a semiconductor device because the quantum state was lost before it could transfer its information."

21 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow! I guess it's safe to say for once that this is a real quantum leap!

    1. Re:Wow! by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      as in.... the smallest possible leap?

    2. Re:Wow! by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 1

      1 Planck Length.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
    3. Re:Wow! by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      It's the least they could do.

    4. Re:Wow! by JustNiz · · Score: 2

      ahh.... so they're walking the Planck.

  2. and what information was sent? by Texmaize · · Score: 2

    No matter what, the researchers keep finding that the one piece of information sent is always 42 for some reason.

    --
    "Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
  3. Wonker Special Christmas Chocolate. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I have a chocolate machine, it has two independant parameters, they are completely random and unconnected: a) Dark, Milk, or White chocolate. b) Hazelnuts, raisins, or brazil nuts.

    At any time, I will get a random type of chocolate, sometimes dark, sometimes milk, sometimes white, with no descernable pattern . At any time I will get a random filling, sometimes, hazelnuts, raisins or even brazil nuts. The nut filling does not correlate to the chocolate type, or visa versa and neither correlates to time.

    Fragments of chocolate shoot everywhere, some of it is in superimposition state, it has no specific nut or chocolate type until we measure it. Only then does it set the chocolate type and filling. Now you might find that hard to believe, if we detected brazil nuts, and the bar became brazil nut, then the brazil hopper at an earlier time must have fewer nuts, and the truck delivering the brazil nuts must have arrived a little earlier to keep it topped up. This is what happens, the effects ripple backwards in time and across infinite space, as this bar goes from superimposition bar to a known bar of chocolate.

    We call this Wonker Special Christmas Chocolate.

    If we break up chocolate on a conveyor belt, take multiple fragments off the conveyor belt*, we can measure one fragment and by spooky distance effect, the other entangled fragments are also the same filling and chocolate type! Now we could Fedex this entangled chocolate across the world, and when one of us measures the chocolate type, the other pieces will be magically set at the same time by spooky distance effect. Sending information faster than light.

    We can even send messages backwards in time, simply decide to measure enough chocolate until we spot enough hazelnut bars that the hazelnut hopper must be refilled earlier in the past when the chocolate was being made. Wonkers in the past now know that when the hopper is being refilled in a short space of time and that this is the signal from the future, and that future selves will take a two week break from Wonker chocolate and so no hopper will need filled for 2 weeks in the past. A signal passed backwards in time.

    * For successful wonkerization, I only choose the chocolate fragments if they came from the machine at the same time. But this is fine, since the nut does not correlate to time, and the chocolate does not correlate to time, I haven't made any kind of school boy logic error.

    Now I know you're skeptical. But my equation says its totally true. And I know I'm applying my Bells test after first filtering for the subset of chocolate bar fragments broken from the same bar, but I prefer to call these 'successful wonkerization of chocolate'. You don't understand, its all too complicated for you, what would a data mining scientist know about such statistical matters!

    Warning, Wonkers Christmas Special Chocolate may contain nuts, and nut allegy people may die from the nuts, long after they've shit out wonkers out, when someone measures another entangled piece and that piece contains nuts.

    1. Re:Wonker Special Christmas Chocolate. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I shall give unto you the Great Secret for Homemade Chocolate, and it has to do with Conching. (Yeah, look it up...)
      In garages, and attics, and basements the world wide are Rock Polishers. Toss some rocks in with some abrasives, and let rumble for a day or two. Out comes Polished Rocks. A hobby that has come and gone for Generations now. But...
      Clean the old $5 Polisher out thoroughly, and add Chocolate Powder, Cocoa Butter, powdered Sugar, and whole Milk powder in proportions to taste, along with a selection of Stainless Steel Ball Bearings varying from 10mm to 25.4mm, and let rumble for a day or two.
      Home Conchers start at around ~$500... and are pretty bad. A proper commercial Concher is the size of a Washing Machine, and weighs a ton... because it has a ton of fine Conching stone slowly rotating within.
      The result is a selection of round milk chocolate Bon-Bons with a surprisingly solid center.
      Merry Christmas!

      Now as for the Article:
      "The ability to scale up this device would mean that photons could be used to pass quantum information from electron to electron in order to form the circuits for a quantum computer."
      Who the fuck bloody cares about Quantum Computers? In the extraordinarily interesting world of Quantum Physics, this is perhaps the most boring application imaginable, for very boring people. It is a massive con job foisted off on those who whack off to Cryptography. Nobody really cares what they have in their Porn Stash...

      Real Quantum Physics... I was once involved in a Weak Interactions Experiment. 22Na nuclei were produced one at a time, and Trapped, and then Cooled by Lasers to the Micro-Kelvin level. Those few out there just may understand the Fundamental Principles at play here; studying Beta Decay and related Neutrino production from a BEC. A lot of Big Bang stuff came out of the Lab where I worked... Antiprotons for instance, but this was quite the opposite. What happens at the Death of a Universe. The Big Whimper, where all that is at play are Quantum Effects. Allowable States. Minimally permissible allowable States. Quantum States. And from that... well, it has been our official Motto for quite a while: Fiat Lux!

      Again, Merry Christmas!

    2. Re: Wonker Special Christmas Chocolate. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You spent a long time spining a yarn about a badly incorrect classical analogy of how quantum entanglement work. You also pretend like physicists say it is too complicated for others to understand, when really it is easy to understand with high school level math. It is only the popsci authors and writings like this that insist on not using basic algebra and end up making it look mysterious by insist it is too complicated to explain without bad analogies. Just do the simple math of Bell's inequality, and you get correlation that are impossible for something analogous to machine that as a chocolate bar split into multiple same pieces. A good setup with low background noise doesn't need the time filtering.

    3. Re:Wonker Special Christmas Chocolate. by Iamthecheese · · Score: 1

      How can I make my chocolate not come out grainy? What temperature do I need and how quickly should I cool it? How can I, with basic home kitchenware, not get it too hot whilst melting it fast enough not to dry out?

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    4. Re: Wonker Special Christmas Chocolate. by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

      WOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

  4. If just. by OpenSourced · · Score: 1

    If just there was a word for "Single Particle of Light"...

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
  5. Re:Human hair as a unit of thickness... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    not just dumbed down, 'human hair' is merely an upper bound, presumably several orders of magnitude above the size we're talking.

    We're used to talking about microchip circuits here - 20 vs 14nm feature sizes is normal. If these guys are building quantum traps, presumably it's at least in that size range, so why not just say to help us visualize what's going on?

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  6. Ok, now what? by Sqreater · · Score: 2

    Seems to be a breakthrough every week in quantum computing, but nothing is broken yet.

    --
    E Proelio Veritas.
  7. Width of a human hair by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    How long is that in terms of football fields?

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    1. Re: Width of a human hair by ReedlyDeedly · · Score: 1

      I'd like to get it in number of long-intestines-wrapped-around-the-Earth.

    2. Re:Width of a human hair by quenda · · Score: 1

      How long is that in terms of football fields?

      English or metric football field?

  8. Re:I got the single particle of light ... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    The message is that a sender exists.

  9. Re:I got the single particle of light ... by tchdab1 · · Score: 1

    Paul Revere already sent a message using, potentially, one "unit of light": one if by land.
    And he most probably wasn't the first.

  10. Wave as it goes by! by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Get back to me when they achieve the same thing with a single wave.

  11. Re:I got the single particle of light ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    Red October did similarly with, "One ping only."

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.