The experimental setup of the researchers. The trap chip is located inside the container underneath the silver cupola, in which a lens captures the light emitted by the trapped ions. (Photograph: ETH Zurich / Pavel Hrmo)
The experimental setup of the researchers. The trap chip is located inside the container underneath the silver cupola, in which a lens captures the light emitted by the trapped ions. (Photograph: ETH Zurich / Pavel Hrmo) Researchers at ETH have managed to trap ions using static electric and magnetic fields and to perform quantum operations on them. In the future such traps could be used to realize quantum computers with far more quantum bits than have been possible up to now. The energy states of electrons in an atom follow the laws of quantum mechanics: they are not continuously distributed but restricted to certain well-defined values - this is also called quantisation. Such quantised states are the basis for quantum bits (qubits), with which scientists want to build extremely powerful quantum computers. To that end, the atoms have to be cooled down and trapped in one place.
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