Tag: quantum

Accurate time with light and designing the NBN

Operations on 11 December, 2012

A new, cheaper way to deliver accurate time across Australia: instead of using hydrogen maser clocks costing hundreds of thousands of dollars we can bounce signals through the national’s optical fibre network according to physics leaders speaking today and tomorrow.

Also today at the national physics congress in Sydney, meet the man whose job it is to figure out how to build the NBN.

And hear about the magic of thermal plasmas, from safer arc welding to saving the ozone layer.

Single-atom writer a landmark for quantum computing

Operations on 20 September, 2012

Posted on behalf of the University of New South Wales

A research team led by Australian engineers has created the first working quantum bit based on a single atom in silicon, opening the way to ultra-powerful quantum computers of the future.

In a landmark paper published today in the journal Nature, the team describes how it was able to both read and write information using the spin, or magnetic orientation, of an electron bound to a single phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon chip.

“For the first time, we have demonstrated the ability to represent and manipulate data on the spin to form a quantum bit, or ‘qubit’, the basic unit of data for a quantum computer,” says Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak. “This really is the key advance towards realising a silicon quantum computer based on single atoms.”

Print your own lasers, lights and TV screens

Niall on 30 June, 2010

Imagine printing your own room lighting, lasers, or solar cells from inks you buy at the local newsagent. Jacek Jasieniak and his colleagues at CSIRO, the University of Melbourne and the University of Padua in Italy, have moved a step closer to such a future, by developing liquid inks to print devices known as quantum dots.

The Diamond Age

Niall on 24 February, 2010

Move aside bronze, iron, silicon

We’re moving into the Diamond Age according to Professor David Awschalom from the University of California.

He and his team have already built experimental diamond chips by punching atom-sized flaws into the diamond’s molecular structure.