Quantum computers, which use attributes of quantum particles like atoms and photons to represent data, promise to solve certain very large problems many orders of magnitude faster than is possible using today's computers. The challenge is being able to manipulate particles well enough to carry out computing. A key step is being able to entangle five particles, which would make it possible to check computations for errors and teleport quantum information within and between computers. Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and the University of Heidelberg in Germany have entangled five photons. "Our experiment demonstrated for the first time the ability to manipulate five-particle entanglement," said Jianwei Pan, a physics professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and a fellow at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Error correction uses mathematical codes to detect when a bit has been accidentally flipped, and is widely used in classical computing because electronic and magnetic bits occasionally switch accidentally from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa. Quantum bits are more delicate and require an error correction method to be feasible.
posted by Marcus Zillman |
4:05 AM
