Rice University physicists have discovered a phase-changing quantum material—and a method for finding more like it—that could potentially be used to create flash-like memory capable of storing quantum bits of information, or qubits, even when a quantum computer is powered down.
Phase-changing materials have been used in commercially available non-volatile digital memory . In rewritable DVDs, for example, a laser is used to heat minute bits of material that cools to form either crystals or amorphous clumps. Two phases of the material, which have very different optical properties, are used to store the ones and zeros of digital bits of information.
In an open-access study published recently in Nature Communications, Rice physicist Ming Yi and more than three dozen co-authors from a dozen institutions similarly showed they could use heat to toggle a crystal of iron, germanium and tellurium between two electronic phases. In each of these, the restricted movement of electrons produces topologically protected quantum states. Ultimately, storing qubits in topologically protected states could potentially reduce decoherence-related errors that have plagued quantum computing.
To read more, click here.