The giant atoms have just increased as contestants to make the best simulators and quantum computers, since the researchers controlled them for an unprecedented time for an ambient temperature experiment.
Take an atom, tune your quantum properties with electromagnetic pulses or laser light, changing the energies of your electrons, and you can use it to encode information. Do this with thousands of atoms and will have a quantum computer or a simulator for exotic quantum materials. However, after a while, atoms can spontaneously change their state, which introduces errors. They are only controllable and, therefore, useful, a finite “life”, which was previously a maximum of 1400 seconds for ambient temperature experiments. Scientists have been able to catch the atoms for longer, but those approaches required that all the configuration be placed in a giant refrigerator, raising logistics challenges.
Zhenpu Zhang and Cindy Regal at the University of Colorado Boulder and his colleagues have now rejected that room temperature record. They used Rydberg atoms, which have a large size because some ethics is far from their nuclei. The team loaded the atoms into a container that had been emptied of all the air particles that could bother them, then grabbed each atom with lasers or “optical tweezers.” This is a standard way to control Rydberg atoms, which are extremely sensitive to electromagnetic fields and light.
The researchers also added a copper layer to the sides of the container, then cooled the coating at -269 ° C (-452 ° F). This protected the atoms of heat, which can change its states. In addition, Zhang says that any street air participation was attenuated to the copper coating, similar to the way in which lukewater drops condense on a cold surface, thus improving the void inside the container. Consistently, the team could keep the atoms trapped and well controlled for approximately 50 minutes-3000 seconds, or approximately twice the similar experiments similarly.
Zhang began building this configuration about five years ago from near Scratch, says Regal. “This is like a total renewal of how you think about doing thesis experiments,” she says.
Clément Sayrin in the Kastler Brosser laboratory in France says that the new approach could make more atoms manipulate, which would increase the computational power of any computer or simulator made of them. “Three thousand seconds are very long. You have to work hard to have long thesis lives for these atoms,” he says. However, having more atoms in the camera would also mean having to use more lasers to control them, which could reduce the lives of atoms, so there are more engineering challenges, says Sayrin.