Jason Petta, an assistant professor of physics, has found a way to alter the property of a lone electron without disturbing the trillions of electrons in its immediate surroundings. Such a feat is an important step toward developing future types of quantum computers. (Photos: Brian Wilson)(Images for news media)
Jason Petta, an assistant professor of physics, has found a way to alter the property of a lone electron without disturbing the trillions of electrons in its immediate surroundings. Such a feat is an important step toward developing future types of quantum computers. (Photos: Brian Wilson) (Images for news media) - * Read about another Princeton University-led team making advances in spintronics * A major hurdle in the ambitious quest to design and construct a radically new kind of quantum computer has been finding a way to manipulate the single electrons that very likely will constitute the new machines' processing components or "qubits." Princeton University's Jason Petta has discovered how to do just that - demonstrating a method that alters the properties of a lone electron without disturbing the trillions of electrons in its immediate surroundings. The feat is essential to the development of future varieties of superfast computers with near-limitless capacities for data. Petta, an assistant professor of physics , has fashioned a new method of trapping one or two electrons in microscopic corrals created by applying voltages to minuscule electrodes. Writing in the Feb. 5 edition of Science, he describes how electrons trapped in these corrals form "spin qubits," quantum versions of classic computer information units known as bits.
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