[HN Gopher] Single atom defect in 2D material can hold quantum i...
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       Single atom defect in 2D material can hold quantum information at
       room temp
        
       Author : westurner
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2024-05-23 23:53 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | smegsicle wrote:
       | > single atomic defect can hold onto quantum information for
       | microseconds under ambient conditions
       | 
       | how long could... a hundred atomic defects?
        
         | krastanov wrote:
         | There are a couple of ways to answer your question:
         | 
         | - If we are talking about storing one qubit per defect:
         | reproducibly/reliably/scalably creating such defects in large
         | numbers is impossible for now, so the answer is either "they
         | simply can not be built" or "just as long as a single defect if
         | we imagine we could build them"
         | 
         | - If we are talking about storing one qubit in a 100 defects:
         | same issues as above hold, but if we imagine that we can build
         | a 100 defects... and if we imagine we have control over such
         | ensemble of defects... and if we imagine we can perform logic
         | gates between neighboring defects, then we can use error
         | correcting codes, so a hundred atomic defects can store the
         | equivalent of one logical qubit for (exponentially) longer than
         | a single defect. But all the things I am imagining here are
         | impossible for the moment (but people are working on it).
        
       | krastanov wrote:
       | To provide some context:
       | 
       | - Usually the problem with room temperature is that the various
       | thermal mechanical excitation and thermal radiation surrounding
       | the qubit lead to interaction with the qubit and the information
       | stored in it "leaks"; that is the main reason a lot of quantum
       | hardware needs cryogenics.
       | 
       | - There are already a couple of similar types of "defects" that
       | are known as a promising way to retain superposition states at
       | room temperature. They work because the defect happens to be
       | mechanically and/or optically isolated from the rest of the
       | environment due to some idiosyncrasies in its physical
       | composition.
       | 
       | - You might have heard of "trapped ion" or "trapped neutral atom"
       | quantum hardware. In those the qubits are atoms (or the electrons
       | of atoms) and they are trapped (with optical or RF tweezers) so
       | they are kept accessible. The type of "defects" discussed here
       | are "simply" atoms trapped in a crystal lattice instead of
       | trapped in optical tweezers -- there are various tradeoffs for
       | that choice.
       | 
       | - While discoveries like this are extremely exciting, there is a
       | completely separate set of issues about scalability, reliability,
       | longevity, controlability, and reproducible fabrication of
       | devices like this. That is true for any quantum hardware and
       | while there are great improvements over the last 15 years and
       | while there is truly exponential progress over that time, we are
       | still below the threshold of this technology being engineeringly
       | and economically useful.
       | 
       | Lastly, the usual reminder: there are a few problems in
       | computing, communication, and sensing, where quantum devices can
       | do things that are impossible classically, but these are very
       | restricted and niche problems. For most things a classical device
       | is not only practically better today, but also is in-principle
       | better even if quantum computers become trivial to build.
        
         | epsilonic wrote:
         | What class of problems benefit significantly from being solved
         | by quantum devices?
        
           | smarm52 wrote:
           | Some helpful resources:
           | 
           | https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/1584/is.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are-there-any-examples-
           | of-...
        
         | xeonmc wrote:
         | how stable are nuclei excitation states with respect to
         | environmental perturbation?
        
         | chasil wrote:
         | >Usually the problem with room temperature is that the various
         | thermal mechanical excitation and thermal radiation surrounding
         | the qubit lead to interaction with the qubit and the
         | information stored in it "leaks"; that is the main reason a lot
         | of quantum hardware needs cryogenics.
         | 
         | This issue, as I understand it, is quantum decoherence, when
         | quantum properties are lost as an object transitions into the
         | behavior of classical physics.
         | 
         | The article describes a period of a millisecond before quantum
         | decoherence occurs. This is (relatively) a long time, and
         | perhaps could be exploited in part to build a quantum computer.
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence
        
           | gliptic wrote:
           | Decoherence is what GP means with information leakage. The
           | quantum state of the object becomes correlated with the
           | environment.
           | 
           | The article is saying this can be avoided in their system for
           | a _microsecond_, still long enough to be potentially useful.
        
             | westurner wrote:
             | From "Computer-generated holography with ordinary display"
             | (2024) https://opg.optica.org/viewmedia.cfm?r=1&rwjcode=ol&
             | uri=ol-4... :
             | 
             | > The hologram cascade is synthesized by solving _an
             | inverse problem with respect to the propagation of
             | incoherent light._
             | 
             | From "Learning quantum Hamiltonians at any temperature in
             | polynomial time" (2024) https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.02243 ..
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40396171 :
             | 
             | >> _The relaxation technique is well known in the field of
             | approximation algorithms, but it had never been tried in
             | quantum learning._
             | 
             | Relaxation (iterative method)
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxation_(iterative_method)
             | 
             | Pertubation theory > History > Beginnings in the study of
             | planetary motion ... QFT > History: https://en.wikipedia.or
             | g/wiki/Perturbation_theory#Beginnings...
             | 
             | QFT > History:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory#History
             | :
             | 
             | > _Quantum field theory emerged from the work of
             | generations of theoretical physicists spanning much of the
             | 20th century. Its development began in the 1920s with the
             | description of interactions between light and electrons,
             | culminating in the first quantum field theory--quantum
             | electrodynamics._ A major theoretical obstacle soon
             | followed with the appearance and persistence of various
             | infinities in perturbative calculations, a problem only
             | resolved in the 1950s with the invention of the
             | renormalization procedure. _A second major barrier came
             | with QFT 's apparent inability to describe the weak and
             | strong interactions, to the point where some theorists
             | called for the abandonment of the field theoretic approach.
             | The development of gauge theory and the completion of the
             | Standard Model in the 1970s led to a renaissance of quantum
             | field theory._
             | 
             | But the Standard Model Lagrangian doesn't describe n-body
             | gravity, n-body quantum gravity, photons in Bose-Einstein
             | Condensates; liquid light in superfluids and
             | superconductors, black hole thermodynamics and external or
             | internal topology, unreversibility or not, or even fluids
             | with vortices or curl that certainly affect particles
             | interacting in multiple fields.
             | 
             | TIL again about Relaxation theory for solving _quantum_
             | Hamiltonians.
             | 
             | OTOH other things on this topic
             | 
             | - "Coherent interaction of a-few-electron quantum dot with
             | a terahertz optical resonator" (2023)
             | https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.10522 :
             | 
             | > _By illuminating the system with THz radiation_ [a wave
             | function (Hamiltonian) is coherently transmitted over a
             | small chip-scale distance]
             | 
             | - "Room Temperature Optically Detected Magnetic Resonance
             | of Single Spins in GaN" (2024)
             | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-024-01803-5 ... "GAN
             | semiconductor defects could boost quantum technology"
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39365467
             | 
             | - "Reversible non-volatile electronic switching in a near-
             | room-temperature van der Waals ferromagnet" (2024)
             | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46862-z ...
             | "Nonvolatile quantum memory: Discovery points path to
             | flash-like qubit storage" (2024)
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39956368 :
             | 
             | >> _" That's the key finding," she said of the material's
             | switchable vacancy order. "The idea of using vacancy order
             | to control topology is the important thing. That just
             | hasn't really been explored. People have generally only
             | been looking at materials from a fully stoichiometric
             | perspective, meaning everything's occupied with a fixed set
             | of symmetries that lead to one kind of electronic topology.
             | Changes in vacancy order change the lattice symmetry. This
             | work shows how that can change the electronic topology. And
             | it seems likely that vacancy order could be used to induce
             | topological changes in other materials as well."_
             | 
             | - "Catalog of topological phonon materials" (2024)
             | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8458 ...
             | "Topological Phonons Discovered and Catalogued in Crystal
             | Lattices" (2024-05)
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40410475
             | 
             | - "Observation of current whirlpools in graphene at room
             | temperature" (2024)
             | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj2167 ..
             | "Electron Vortices in Graphene Detected"
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40360691 :
             | 
             | > re: the fractional quantum hall effect, and decoherence:
             | _How are spin currents and vorticity in electron vortices
             | related?_
        
       | Sniffnoy wrote:
       | Non-AMP version: https://phys.org/news/2024-05-scientists-atom-
       | defect-2d-mate...
        
       | fuzzfactor wrote:
       | The first time I handled boron nitride I knew it was different
       | than most other materials.
        
       | vlovich123 wrote:
       | Is this for implementing something akin to SRAM or registers for
       | a future hypothetical QC or could this improve classical
       | storage/memory somehow?
        
         | lightweightbaby wrote:
         | These kind of atom-like systems can be used as registers for a
         | quantum computer. They allow you to store a qubit and apply
         | gates to that qubit. It doesn't make practical sense to use it
         | to improve classical storage, although it actually can pack
         | more information than a classical bit using "superdense coding"
         | [0]
         | 
         | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdense_coding
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-25 23:00 UTC)