semiconductor chip tagged posts

High-frequency waves classified as terahertz occupy a relatively underused region of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared light and microwaves. Researchers have long recognized their unique potential for applications including ultrafast wireless communication, security screening, remote sensing and medical imaging.

As technologies push toward higher operating frequencies and data rates, photonics-based terahertz systems, which use light at high speed to generate and process terahertz signals, have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional electronic technologies because of their superior bandwidth and p...

Researchers demonstrate the first single-photon transistor using a semiconductor chip. They used a single photon, stored in a quantum memory, to toggle the state of other photons. Credit: E. Edwards/Joint Quantum Institute

Researchers have demonstrated the first single-photon transistor using a semiconductor chip. Transistors are tiny switches that form the bedrock of modern computing; billions of them route electrical signals around inside a smartphone, for instance. Quantum computers will need analogous hardware to manipulate quantum information. But the design constraints for this new technology are stringent, and today’s most advanced processors can’t be repurposed as quantum devices. That’s because qubits, have to follow different rules laid out by quantum physics.

Scientists can use ...

A fully packaged device for trapping and manipulating single electrons and photons. A series of on-chip electrodes (lower left and upper right) lead to the formation of a double quantum dot that confines a single electron below the surface of the chip. The photon, which is free to move within the full 7-millimeter span of the cavity, exchanges quantum information with the electron inside the double quantum dot. (Photo courtesy of the Jason Petta research group, Department of Physics)

In a step that brings silicon-based quantum computers closer to reality, researchers at Princeton University have built a device in which a single electron can pass its quantum information to a particle of light...