Quantum Superposition tagged posts

There has been significant progress in the field of quantum computing.

Big global players, such as Google and IBM, are already offering cloud-based quantum com...

A new strategy helps quantum bits stay on task. Credit: Image courtesy of Florida State University

Development of quantum computers may be expedited by collaboration between physicists and chemists. Quantum computer power will dwarf that of today’s machines, with huge implications for cryptography, computational chemistry and other fields. While qubits can take many different forms, the MagLab team worked with carefully designed tungsten oxide molecules that contained a single magnetic holmium ion. The magnetic electrons associated with each holmium ion circulate either clockwise or counterclockwise around the axis of the molecule. These spin states are analogous to the “0s” and “1s” of computer bits...

Fountain interferometer. Credit: Nature (2015). DOI: 10.1038/nature16155

Scientists entangling quantum particles and even whole atoms has been in the news a lot over the past couple of years as experiments have been conducted with the goal of attempting to better understand the strange phenomenon—and much has been learned. But, as scientists figure out how to entangle two particles at ever greater distances apart there has come questions about the size of objects that can be entangled. Schrödinger’s cat has come up in several such discussions as theorists and those in the applied fields seek to figure out if it might be truly possible to cause a whole cat to actually be in two places at once...