Princeton University professor Jason Petta has developed a technique
that can control the properties of a lone electron, a feat that is
essential to the development of quantum computers with near-limitless
capabilities. Petta's method achieves control of single electrons
extremely rapidly, in one-billionth of a second, another feature that is
crucial to developing new quantum computers. These controlled
electrons will most likely form the foundation of a quantum computer's
processing components, which are called qubits. A qubit based on the
spin of an electron could have nearly limitless potential because it can
neither be strictly on nor strictly off. "Petta and coworkers
demonstrate a new method that utilizes the nuclear spins for performing
fast quantum operations," says German University of Konstantz's Guido
Burkard. The qubits are cooled to temperatures near absolute zero and
trapped in two tiny corrals called quantum wells, which are on the
surface of a high-purity, gallium arsenide chip. "Our approach is
really to look at the building blocks of the system, to think deeply
about what the limitations are and what we can do to overcome them,"
Petta says.
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