New World Record For Silicon Quantum Computing

Research teams working in the same laboratories at UNSW Australia have found two different ways to solve a critical challenge and greatly accelerate the realisation of super powerful quantum computers.

The teams created two types of quantum bits, or “qubits” – the building blocks for quantum computers – that each perform quantum operations with accuracy above 99 percent.

The UNSW teams, part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology, were first in the world to demonstrate single-atom spin qubits in silicon (reported in Nature).

Now the team led by Dzurak has discovered a way to create an “artificial atom” qubit with a device remarkably similar to the silicon transistors used in consumer electronics.

Post-doctoral researcher Menno Veldhorst, lead author on the paper reporting the artificial atom qubit, says it's amazing that we can make such an accurate qubit using pretty much the same devices as we have in our laptops and phones.

Meanwhile, Morello’s team has been pushing the “natural” phosphorus atom qubit to the extremes of performance. Dr Juha Muhonen, a post-doctoral researcher and lead author on the natural atom qubit paper, says The phosphorus atom contains in fact two qubits: the electron, and the nucleus. With the nucleus in particular, we have achieved accuracy close to 99.99%. That means only one error for every 10,000 quantum operations. With the nuclear spin, the team has also established the new world record of “quantum coherence time”, that is how long the quantum information can be preserved on the qubit: they stretched it to an astonishing 35 seconds, which is an eternity in the quantum world.

With these new records, the Australian teams have laid the foundations to build truly scalable silicon quantum computers, where information can be processed over long time scales, and errors are so rare that they can be entirely eliminated using quantum error correction.
NEWS STORIES: http://recode.net/2014/10/12/a-big-step-forward-for-quantum-computing-accuracy

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/10/13/4104681.htm