AsianScientist (Nov. 26, 2013) – Researchers in Japan have constructed a ‘circuit board’ of more than 10,000 quantum systems – an increase of three orders of magnitude over the nearest competing design.

University of Tokyo Professor Akira Furusawa’s idea was inspired by University of Sydney’s researcher Dr. Nicolas Menicucci’s proposal of the largest quantum ‘circuit board’ ever produced – an essential component for a quantum computer made of laser light. An article in Nature Photonics has been published on this study.

The international collaboration with the University of Tokyo and the Australian National University has seen the largest number of quantum systems brought together in a single component jump from 14 to 10,000.

“This experiment now holds the world record for the largest quantum resource ever produced in which every part can be accessed directly and individually, which is essential if it is to be useful for quantum computing,” said Menicucci. “The transistor, invented in the mid-1940s, replaced vacuum tubes in ordinary computers with components that can be mass produced,” he said. “The scalability afforded by transistors enabled the explosion in computing technology we’ve seen in the last 65 years. Similarly, this breakthrough promises scalable design of laser-light quantum computing hardware.”

A working quantum computer would exploit the mysterious properties of quantum physics, allowing the most difficult computational problems – currently impractical for even the fastest supercomputers – to become feasible to solve.

“Huge advances in telecommunications, physics and counterintelligence are possible when we have devices with such immense computational power. The two main obstacles to creating quantum computers are the precise control of tiny quantum systems and the issue of scalability, which is the ability to make bigger and bigger quantum computers out of small parts,” said Menicucci.

The article can be found at: Yokoyama S et al. (2013) Ultra-large-scale continuous-variable cluster states multiplexed in the time domain.

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Source: University of Sydney; Photo: Cea/Flickr/CC.

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