Thursday, October 20, 2011
An American Physical Society article describes a recent IQC experiment as a kind of subatomic dance with a bright future in quantum information research.
![The magnetic dipole field produced by an electron spin, and a malonic acid molecule](/institute-for-quantum-computing/sites/default/files/uploads/images/dipolar.jpg)
The APS “Viewpoint” article, written by University of Buffalo physicist Xuedong Hu, describes how IQC researchers put nuclear spins “into lockstep” with instructions from an electron — an important step forward in using nuclear spins for quantum computation.
Hu’s article is a commentary on a paper published in a recent edition of Physical Review Letters, jointly authored by IQC researchers Yingjie Zhang, Colm Ryan, Raymond Laflamme and Jonathan Baugh.
The paper explores a new technique developed at IQC — a novel method for controlling quantum bits (qubits) using nuclear spins. The technique capitalizes on the “anisotropic hyperfine interaction” between an electron and two nuclear spins in a solid-state system.
The result indicates that these types of interactions may be exploited to create other more controllable and scalable systems for quantum computing.
Writes Hu: “The future of the technique described in this paper seems bright.”