Triple E Entanglement Lends Hope to Quantum Computer 135
tinrib writes "New Scientist reports that a new semiconductor-based technique for entangling multiple electrons could mark a significant step towards the development the first fully-functional quantum computer. The new technique involves using electrons rather than the more traditional photons and ions, and so far they have managed to entangle three electrons. "
MMm Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Re:MMm Hmm (Score:1, Funny)
Re:MMm Hmm (Score:1)
Electron Freedom League! (Score:2)
Join the Electron Freedom League!
Electrons have labored far too long under cruel molecular bonds in their foul enslavement to protons. Our goal is to turn the Universe into hot plasma so that electrons might roam free! If justice is in your heart, join us!
Reminds me of a Robert Frost Poem (Score:2)
SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Re:Reminds me of a Robert Frost Poem (Score:1)
*laugh* Yes, I can see how. :-)
Re:MMm Hmm (Score:1)
Electrons? I thought 'Triple E Entanglement' was some sort of female mud-wrestling thing..
Repost. (Score:3, Informative)
And if they entangle a fourth (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And if they entangle a fourth (Score:2)
And it(factoring 15) was already done with 5 qubits, although the scientist doing the experiment had to help the machine a little. At the stage they're at, it's more important to just show that "it works".
Re:And if they entangle a fourth (Score:1)
Triple E Enlargements (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Triple E Enlargements (Score:2)
What were you thinking about?
Combination of factors (Score:1)
*bows head in shame* Yeah... I saw it too. Or perhaps, "It's twue! It's twue!"
*honk*
How big? How many? (Score:3, Insightful)
Physically how big are the "box's" containing these 3 entangleds
Re:How big? How many? (Score:2)
Scales exponentially with the number of entangled (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Scales exponentially with the number of entangl (Score:2, Funny)
16??!?! Jeebus, but every sunday-school student knows that Noah's ark was 40-qubits, and that was thousands of years ago!
You'd think that modern science would be getting better at this, not worse.
Re:Scales exponentially with the number of entangl (Score:1)
The quantum arms race (Score:2)
Indeed. One reason to keep funding them, at least until hard limits to the problem are determined, is that the payoff is potentially enormous. Quantum codebreaking could revolutionize the CIA and NSA's job for a while, putting them back to the golden era in WWII when they had cracked German codes like Enigma, without the knowledge of the Germans.
Quantum computing will be almost the exact opposite of ordinary computing: today, the difference in computing power available to the average joe, compared to large corporations and governments, is not that great. Quantum computing will change this balance - it'll only be available to the big guys, at least for a good long time. It'll potentially be an enormously profitable tool, which could confer great power to those who control it.
It's like the information-age equivalent of the atomic bomb - once the possibilities were understood, it didn't make sense *not* to work on it, because the possibility of one's enemies/competitors having it when you didn't was horrible to contemplate.
Re:How big? How many? (Score:2, Informative)
First, the advantages of quantum computing. It is well established that there are quantum algorithms for which there are no known efficient classical algorithms. That is, there is a known efficient quantum algorithm for breaking RSA, and no known classical algorithm. Complexity theory still hasn't been able to determine if P belongs to NP, so there may theoretically be an efficient classical algorithm that breaks RSA. Only time and lots of math will tell. However, it is possible (and some say likely) that the space of problems that quantum computers can tackle efficiently is strictly greater than the space of problems classical computers can solve efficiently.
In a physical quantum computer, noise is a problem. That is, your qubits will become entangled with the environment and you lose the information encoded in them. Several others have noted this problem. What they have not noted is that there exist techniques for overcoming the problem of noise using additional qubits. The math is complicated, but the outcome is that quantum computers can be made sufficiently reliable and stable to perform computation at realistic conditions (i.e. well above absolute zero. like room temperature). However, this increases the number of qubits one would need to perform computation with.
For instance, the number of qubits needed to break RSA grows with the log of the size of the key. This is very encouraging. However, the number of qubits necessary to provide sufficient error correction grows this number significantly. That said, a reasonable piece of quantum hardware that could break 1024 bit RSA would require something on the order of 10^3 qubits, subsets of which would need to be entangled to perform the computation.
Re:How big? How many? (Score:1)
Re:How big? How many? (Score:2)
Re:twat (Score:1)
yeah i can't spel - who craes?
and obvious questions; yes, but they weren't answered and they should have been!
Re:twat (Score:1)
[i am of course being sarcastic, but you are probably american]
What is Quantum Computing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is Quantum Computing? (Score:1)
Re:What is Quantum Computing? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What is Quantum Computing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What is Quantum Computing? (Score:1)
Re:What is Quantum Computing? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What is Quantum Computing? (Score:1)
Re:What is Quantum Computing? (Score:2)
Re:What is Quantum Computing? (Score:5, Informative)
Classical computing deals with bits which are exactly in one of two states, 0 and 1.
In quantum mechanics, the 0 and 1 state are two eigenstates for a single qubit. However, each qubit can be in a linear combination of these two eigenstates (state must be normalized to 1). If you measure whether the state of a single qubit is a 0 or 1, then you've collapsed the wavefunction, and the particle is forever in that specific state (if no future interactions occur).
That in itself isn't too interesting. But if you make a system of several qubits, you can overlap the wavefunctions, or entangle the qubits, in such a way that an operator acted on the system relates to a specific process you're trying to measure (ie, factoring a number), and the multi-qubit eigenstates of that operator. This means that the intermediate qubits, which are in linear combinations of the states 0 and 1, interact amongst each other, and measurement of the entire system yields a value of the measurement operator by letting the qubits interfere nearly simultaneously. This is why many apparent operations can happen in parallel in a quantum computer.
I don't know the specifics of how to apply Shor's algorithm or any other quantum computing algorithms, but that's the basic gist of it. Interference of the wavefunctions of several individual qubits can do some interesting things.
That said, there are several ways of creating a qubit. One way exploits the fluxoid quantization of a superconducting loop. Any loop of a superconductor MUST have a total magnetic flux through it equal to an integer multiple of the fundamental flux quanta. So, if you apply a magnetic field such that you are applying exactly half this value, superconducting currents must thenflow around the loop to give extra magnetic flux (Ampere's law) to make the total flux an integer multiple of the flux quanta. These currents can flow to either enhance the applied field, giving 1 flux quanta, or they can destroy the applied field, giving 0 flux quanta. However, until the current is measured, it isn't known whether it flows clockwise or counterclockwise. The state of this qubit is thus in a state 1/sqrt(2)[clockwise] +1/sqrt(2)[counterclockwise].
Other ways to make a qubit make use of spintronics, which use the two spin states of an electron as the basis for the two qubit states. This is an upcoming approach, as spintronics research is really taking off quickly now.
People have also used NMR to produce the qubits, which I don't know the details of. But IIRC, this was the method used by the group that prime factored 15.
Admit it! (Score:1)
You made that up!!! 8^P
~SL
technological convenience strikes again (Score:1)
Cool!
important for multi bit computing (Score:5, Informative)
If these techniqes can be extended, it might be possible to build an effective quantum computer with eight or even more bits. And remember that quantum bits aren't directly comparable to bits in traditional microprocessors, so eight is really very good.
The next big challenge is miniaturization; a quantum computer is tiny, but the equipment to monitor and interpret computations is massive.
Re:important for multi bit computing (Score:1, Informative)
2. For some people, quantum computer is hype. Over here at MIT, research on quantum computing has been abandoned (well, typically at least)
3. What does miniaturization has to do with quantum computing which is supposed to make faster chips?
Cannot resist... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure the masters of code bloat will hog up such a computer as fast as you can say 'Schrodinger'. The main advantage of doing multiple computations at once will be that while your quantum computer BSOD's, Clippy will come walking right through that asking if you need help.
Re:Cannot resist... (Score:2, Funny)
Can't you see it now? Quantum Clippy will actually be a cat....in a box.
(/me smells burning karma and waits for the fire alarm to go off)
White Paper (Score:3)
Re:White Paper (Score:3, Informative)
a good idea but doomed to failure (Score:4, Informative)
the problem is not entangling the photons in the first place but keeping them in that state, the slightest disturbances (lorries going past, the old woman next door doing the hoovering etc etc) can cause them to become untangled, and so for this reason the whole system must be cooled to absolute zero.
Unfortunately the method described in the article does not easily allow for this as the technique only allows for adiabatic cooling to be used as opposed to the more efficient direct pressure systems used on compteting technologies. Without this it is likely to be far too expensive to be brought into general use
Re:a good idea but doomed to failure (Score:5, Informative)
That is not true. You don't need then to be entangled for the rest of the eternity, just for a few nanoseconds, so you can compute with them, and then reset them back to its entangled state for a new computation.
The problem with /. reposting news is that I'm so stupid that I read the comments again, they usually end up being the same questions, and I end up answering them again.
Re:a good idea but doomed to failure (Score:2)
Re:a good idea but doomed to failure (Score:2)
It's theorized that solid state QC's have a very good chance of scaling to large numbers of qubits, enabling such quantum error correction algorithms to be used and thus solving the decoherence problem.
Re:a good idea but doomed to failure (Score:1)
As some other people have pointed out, there are quantum error correction codes that allow you to perform quantum operations given that your error rate is below a certain threshold (I don't remember the right number, but I think that you need to be able to perform about 10^4 operations before your system dephases in order to have a "fault tolerant quantum computer". Besides, there are several proposals that look to minimize the dephasing problems.
Other point is that entangling photons is not that difficult (altough not that easy either...). However, entangling electrons in a controlled way in a solid state sample is much more difficult. That is really cutting edge research.I am *really* interested in looking at their scientific paper.
Just as a note, quantum computers are not around the corner and won't be for quite a while, but I don't think we'll ever get a refrigerator so good that reaches absolute zero (unless Lisa Simpson invents it).
Pablo B.
Tripe E Entanglement (Score:1, Funny)
"Triple E Enlargement Lends Hope to Quantum Computer"
Needless to say I was both baffled and erotically curious.
Dangerous Liasons... (Score:2)
3 entangled electrons... Which one is Michelle Pfeiffer ?
Steve
Re:Dangerous Liasons... (Score:1)
All of them. Until they become collapsed, that is... :-)
New Scientist != Science (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:New Scientist != Science (Score:3, Informative)
DMCA Lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DMCA Lawsuit (Score:1)
Re:DMCA Lawsuit (Score:4, Informative)
In order to be illegal under the DMCA the devices PRIMARY USE must be to circumvent copy protection. No one outside of the RIA and MPAA would argue that a quantum machine was anything remotely close to that.
The effect of Quantum machines in terms of military intellligence (and the populaces right to own them) will surely be debated, but there is nothing in the DMCA that can be used to prevent the spread of Quantum machines.
Re:DMCA Lawsuit (Score:2)
In short: No quantum computer for you.
3 electrons? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:3 electrons? (Score:1, Funny)
Quantum Computer Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microft
-Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Re:Quantum Computer Eh? (Score:1)
What this implies is that messages encrypted using techniques common today, such as IDEA with 128-bit keys, will be easily broken. It will, of course, have no effect on messages encoded using one-time pad techniques. Further, I assume that current public key methods with long enough keys will still be safe in practice.
Re:Quantum Computer Eh? (Score:3, Informative)
To modify an old phrase: What quantum physics giveth, and it taketh away.
Quantum encryption makes it impossible for wiretappers to snoop on transmissions. As long as the communication endpoints are secure (this includes physical security), transmissions over quantum channels are completely secure, quantum computers NOTwithstanding.
The problem with completely secure crypto isn't technical, it's economic and political. You need special equipment (and a direct fiber link) to do quantum crypto. Unless you can afford (and are legally allowed) to buy this equipment, your communications will be vulnerable to governments and powerful corporations who have quantum code cracking computers.
Re:Quantum Computer Eh? (Score:1)
step one: make up your own alphabet/language.
step two: write a letter in it on paper
step three: bite the bullet and pay the 40 cents to mail it.
as long as you don't leave your rosetta stone lying around your good.
Re:Quantum Computer Eh? (Score:2, Informative)
There are only around a half dozen algorithms anyone's come up with for a quantum computer that are good for anything; one of them is for factoring primes, which makes RSA encryption (to my understanding) more or less trivial to break.
If, suddenly, people gain access to quantum computers.... we'll start using other encryption schemes. It's not an "end to privacy"; it's an "end to RSA encryption".
So sleep well at night; the big bad QC's aren't coming to get you... and for the love of God, don't get your education on anything with the word "quantum" in it from here!
Re:Quantum Computer Eh? (Score:1)
Microft
All about Quantum Computing (Score:5, Informative)
Especially recommended are the tutorials [qubit.org] where you can pick up material corresponding to your current understanding of quantum mechanics.
For this article, you might be looking for the Kindergarten explanation of entanglement [qubit.org]
Great! An infinite number of ways to crash! (Score:3, Funny)
I can see it now. "Dr. Watson reports answer hazy. Try again later."
quantum computing and quantum processing (Score:1)
Well of course they're triple entangled (Score:4, Funny)
"It's so cute," they said.
"It won't be any trouble," they said.
"It'll keep the mice out," they said, trying to prove it was working animal instead of the fact that they were just a bunch of softies.
Now all I want to know who's going to sit here all day and untangle this mess, 'cause it sure as hell ain't gonna be me.
Maybe I'll get lucky and the damned furry little vomit ball will go curl up in the "warm spot" in the cyclotron.
KFG
Re:Well of course they're triple entangled (Score:1)
In quantum information, kittens are important. In order to get the entangled states to survive long enough to do any useful work, we must offer cats to the Great God Schrodinger. If Schrodinger is pleased with the sacrifice, the cat dies and the computer works. If Schrodinger is displeased, the cat lives and the computer fails. Sometimes the cat dies AND the computer fails, but that's just experimental error.
The sacrifice of cats is quite essential, and a well-respected scientific procedure. Please don't tell the animal rights people, they won't understand.
Re:Well of course they're triple entangled (Score:3, Funny)
Roaches check in, and their state becomes indeterminate.
KFG
Re:Well of course they're triple entangled (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well of course they're triple entangled (Score:1)
Don't go sticking your feet in a Schrodinger's Roach Motel.
Man, you have to tell some people *everything.*
( And nevermind the fact that making skin contact constitutes a measurment, and thus determines state absolutely, because that would break the whole thread of the doofey joke, and we wouldn't want *that*, now would we?)
KFG
Re:Well of course they're triple entangled (Score:2)
No, it's (Score:1)
LOL funny post KFG
SB
Quantum grandad (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm only 32 and I've been into computers since I was a kid. But I can't get my head round this quantum stuff at all. At least my grandad was in his late sixties before he started not understanding things. Seems like our generation aren't going to be so lucky. Or perhaps everyone else understands it and I'm just dim. Ho hum.
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:2)
If you choose to "bow out" of the race why be sad about it? Be happy that others are forging ahead in your absence and that you can now enjoy the technological "magic" along with the rest of the civilians.
PS Quantum doesn't need to be very complicated. Superposition seems complicated when they throw the math at you but its really just this:
The universe hasn't yet decided the outcome of certain quantum events so all possibilities exist at time zero. A quantum calculation involves forcing the universe to resolve the uncertainty at time one. Programming a quantum calculation involves setting things up so that the universe will select or sort for the outcome you are looking for given a range of inputs.
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:3, Funny)
The universe hasn't yet decided the outcome of certain quantum events so all possibilities exist at time zero. A quantum calculation involves forcing the universe to resolve the uncertainty at time one. Programming a quantum calculation involves setting things up so that the universe will select or sort for the outcome you are looking for given a range of inputs.
[Slaps forehead] Oh, now I understand! It's all so simple! At a quantum level, all possibilities exist and all we are doing is forcing the universe to resolve uncertainty! Piece of cake!
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:5, Interesting)
Quantum mechanics unravels deterministically, while it is sampled stochastically. What this means is that the universe is computing the outcomes, and we're sampling random values within those outcomes.
In layman's terms, the idea is to tap into the biggest, fastest, most powerful physics computational engine ever created, and setting up bizzare interactions of objects, because the particular bizzare interactions will happen to result in a state that we can read to get an answer to a math problem - simply by the nature of the laws of physics, which are mathematical. If we know, for example, that EM is an inverse square law, then the simplest way to compute the inverse square of X is to convert X into the distance from a light source to a sensor, and just read the sensor.
Using the fundamental laws of physics to do math is the idea behind the abacus, in an extremely abstract sense. It's also the idea behind the Babbage computer, in a slightly less abstract sense, and behind the electronic computer, in an even less abstract sense. The quantum computer just continues the de-abstraction trend, and gets the computation as close to the bare-level of the actual physics engine as possible.
Think about it - if you have a itty bitty calculator that can do 3 calculations per second, any calculations you want, or a huge honkin' physics simulator that can do 3x10^30 calculations per second, so long as they're all four-dimensional tensor calculations, what's easier - punching in sixteen trillion equations by hand into the hand calculator, or finding a way to convert those equations into four-dimensional tensor calculations and throwing them at that enormous physics computational engine?
Now, what's the biggest physics computational engine we have access to? (hint: You're soaking in it.)
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:2)
OMG!! The Matrix??
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:4, Interesting)
In QC, you set things up so that the "quantum entanglement" is going to do a calculation for you, in effect you're not only using the computer you built, but all of the computers it might have become. Then you observe the results in such a way that only the "potential" computer that achieves the right result is remaining.
If you really want to give yourself a headache, think of it this way: To find out if the cat in the box is alive or dead, you ask the cat.
--Dave
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:1)
If you really want to give yourself a headache, think of it this way: To find out if the cat in the box is alive or dead, you ask the cat.
I don't think I can get my head around poking my computer with a stick to get an answer...
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:1)
The trick is to find out how to ask the box!
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:2)
There has been information-science work on how a quantum computer might be applied, but it has naturally been purely theoretical now, so again if your interest in computers hasn't extended as far as information-science theory you shouldn't be surprised not to be up on quantum computing.
It's not like Oracle is going to be advertising "Oracle 11i with Quantum Query extensions" any time soon..."
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:1, Insightful)
Or perhaps everyone else understands it and I'm just dim.
Here's the scarier, and even more likely reality : NOBODY understands it fully, but everybody understands their little piece well enough to be able to collectively put something together.
This exponentially increasing requirement of trust keeps me up at night.
Re:Quantum grandad (Score:3, Interesting)
If you really want to understand the stuff in the news about quantum computing and nanotechnology, I'd recommend going to a bookstore near your local science/engineering college, and peruse the used textbooks for a good one on quantum mechanics. Some of them introduce quantum with a telling experiment (Stern-Gerlach or photon polarization); I find that this is the easiest way to attach some physical significance to the ideas discussed in the news (keep in mind that most journalists don't know any more about this than you, so take what they write with a grain of salt!).
If you _really_ want to know more... (Score:2, Informative)
The the author Dr. Amir Aczel was interviewd by Quarks and Quarks [radio.cbc.ca] (a CBC radio show).
The interview aired on the December 14, 2002 show [radio.cbc.ca]
You can listen to the the author in mp3 [radio.cbc.ca] or ogg [radio.cbc.ca]!
I highly recomend the book. It is technical, but very readable for anyone with a little math/physics background.
Hmm (Score:1)
Definition of Entanglement. (Score:2)
Well, I've made a quick lookup in the dictionary [reference.com] and I think, after having read the article, that the second
definition must be the most accurate one.
1. To twist together or entwine into a confusing mass; snarl.
2. To complicate; confuse.
3. To involve in or as if in a tangle. See Synonyms at catch.
Re:Definition of Entanglement. (Score:1)
Big deal (Score:2)
Schrödinger's cat (Score:1)
A cat is placed in a sealed box with a device which releases a fatal dose of cyanide if a
radioactive decay is detected. In this state the cat is neither alive nor dead but a ghostly mix of the two possibilities.
Now how long will my encryption keys have to be? (Score:1)
Here is a better link: (Score:2)
Re:Here is a better link: (Score:2)
Re:New /. slogan (Score:1)