Electrical engineers Stephen Lyon (left) and Alexei Tyryshkin examine the casing that holds the silicon crystal they used to coordinate the spins of billions of electrons in work toward developing the technology for powerful machines known as quantum computers. (Photo by John Jameson)
by John Sullivan In the basement of Hoyt Laboratory at Princeton University, Alexei Tyryshkin clicked a computer mouse and sent a burst of microwaves washing across a silicon crystal suspended in a frozen cylinder of stainless steel. The waves pulsed like distant music across the crystal and deep within its heart, billions of electrons started spinning to their beat. Reaching into the silicon crystal and choreographing the dance of 100 billion infinitesimal particles is an impressive achievement on its own, but it is also a stride toward developing the technology for powerful machines known as quantum computers. "Standard computers have come to their limit and cannot do some of the things we want," said Tyryshkin, a research scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering. "We are trying to find a different way of doing computing, using additional degrees of freedom involving quantum computing and things like spins." Using the spins of subatomic particles such as electrons offers a path to developing a machine that would apply the reality-bending rules of quantum mechanics to arrive at new and powerful ways to approach difficult mathematical problems. But maintaining that control for long enough to build a working computer has proven incredibly difficult. Until recently, the best attempts at such control lasted for only a fraction of a second.
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