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A team of scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, USA, has managed to entangle ions using microwave fields for the first time. According to their publication in the journal Nature ("Microwave quantum logic gates for trapped ions"), the team has implemented a method that could be important for the realization of an integrated quantum computer with trapped ions. |
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Christian Ospelkaus, professor within the Cluster of Excellence QUEST (Centre for Quantum Engineering and Space-Time Research) at Leibniz Universität Hannover and Physikalisch-Technischen Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig since December 2010, has realized the experiment together with colleagues at NIST. |
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Entanglement is a concept at the heart of the bizarre quantum world. We take it for granted that, if two coins are flipped simultaneously, each of them alone would show a random pattern of heads or tails, independent of the other coin. In a quantum world, the two coins could be manipulated such that, if one of them shows heads, the other one will too, and vice versa. This is called an 'entangled state' of the two ions. If we identify 'heads' and 'tails' with the two values of 'zero' and 'one', this operation represents a so-called entangling quantum logic gate. Such gate operations are the crucial step in building a 'quantum computer'. These devices might one day exploit the laws of quantum mechanics to solve certain problems in physics, mathematics and cryptography much faster than classical supercomputers can do. |
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