Scientists have achieved a major breakthrough in forecasting and eliminating environmental decoherence, an occurrence that is considered as a hindrance in the path of quantum computing.
University of British Columbia conducted a theoretical work for quashing decoherence and its results were experimented and confirmed at the University of California Santa Barbara. The journal Nature published the finding online in its July issue.
Quantum mechanics explains that matter exists in one or more physical states simultaneously. These simultaneous states are called state superposition. Physicists have succeeded in examining the state of superposition in tiny particles such as electrons. As more complicated and huge physical objects entangle and interact with other environmental objects, they are found to exist in a single physical state consistently. The process of decaying of these physical objects into a single state due to entanglement is known as decoherence.
The potential of quantum computing to be highly robust and quicker than previous computing is based on switches that exhibit superposition state which means that the switches must simultaneously be in the on and off state. The decoherence phenomenon has so far been an obstacle to obtain the state of superposition with several molecules.
The researchers at the University of California developed a crystalline array using Iron-8 molecules that appear in a quantum superposition state in which the total magnetization of every molecule had an up and down orientation at the same time. They observed the decay time of this superposition and found that the decay was amazingly slower as expected by the researchers at University of British Columbia.
Source: http://www.ubc.ca/