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Category: computing

A team of scientists from Oxford University has shown how the natural movement of bacteria could be harnessed to assemble and power microscopic ‘windfarms’ — or other man-made micromachines such as smartphone components.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances (“Active micromachines: Microfluidics powered by mesoscale turbulenceence”), uses computer simulations to demonstrate that the chaotic swarming effect of dense active matter such as bacteria can be organised to turn cylindrical rotors and provide a steady power source.

Scientists simulate tiny bacteria-powered windfarm

Scientists simulate tiny bacteria-powered ‘windfarm’.

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Finding evidence of many-body localization in a closed quantum system.

During equilibration ordinary many-body systems lose all information about the initial state. Every morning we experience an example for this behaviour. Milk poured into a cup of coffee mixes perfectly and after some time it is impossible to say how exactly the two fluids were put together. The same behaviour holds for almost all quantum systems. However, recently a new phenomenon called “many-body localization” has been predicted theoretically, which allows well insulated quantum systems to preserve memory of the initial state forever. Now a team of scientists around Dr. Christian Groß and Professor Immanuel Bloch (Director at MPQ and Chair of Quantum Optics at LMU Munich), in cooperation with David Huse (Princeton University), has obtained evidence of such a behaviour in a two-dimensional quantum system of cold rubidium atoms trapped in an optical lattice.

The scientists observed that – beyond a certain degree of disorder imprinted on the particle ensemble in the beginning – the system would relax into a steady state still containing detailed microscopic information about its past. “We were able to observe the transition from a thermalized state into a many-body localized phase”, Christian Groß points out. “It is the first observation of that kind in a regime that is not accessible with state-of-the-art simulations on classical computers.” The experiment is not only of fundamental interest; the results might also lead to new ways for storing quantum information.

Motivated by the foundational problem of how interacting particles behave in a disordered system, in the 1950s the American physicist Philip Warren Anderson discovered the famous localization phenomenon for non-interacting particles, now called “Anderson localization”. Here, disorder prevents the particles to move and consequently all transport is stopped. But what happens when disorder comes together with interactions? Will interactions lead to transport and thermalization, or will the localization persist even at high energies? So far, there is no theoretical model that faithfully predicts the evolution of a closed quantum system in more than one dimension under these conditions, although, the possibility for localization has been theoretically suggested.

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More steps forward for QC through the discovery of a versatile effective spin system suitable for quantum simulations and universal quantum computation.

Using trapped atomic ions, we demonstrate a tailored and versatile effective spin system suitable for quantum simulations and universal quantum computation. By simply applying microwave pulses, selected spins can be decoupled from the remaining system and, thus, can serve as a quantum memory, while simultaneously, other coupled spins perform conditional quantum dynamics. Also, microwave pulses can change the sign of spin-spin couplings, as well as their effective strength, even during the course of a quantum algorithm. Taking advantage of the simultaneous long-range coupling between three spins, a coherent quantum Fourier transform—an essential building block for many quantum algorithms—is efficiently realized. This approach, which is based on microwave-driven trapped ions and is complementary to laser-based methods, opens a new route to overcoming technical and physical challenges in the quest for a quantum simulator and a quantum computer.

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To truly reach a fully connected world/ singularity we have to move tech into more and more bio-computing world. I do believe QC will assist us in getting the fundamental infrastructure we need for singularity.

We already must deal with computers too much rather than too little, and there is already lots of advanced computing done also for example in materials science and nanotechnology, for example molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo simulations.[2] The molecular biologist’s programs for predicting protein folding can also count as nanotechnology. Nevertheless, all of our previous articles concluded that we need more computing, and several mentioned statistics. This would sound predictable if coming from a statistical physicist with a background in computing, advertising his skills. However, we mean a more efficient computing rather than simply more.

We started the type of computing we do only recently and for reasons not yet mentioned: Given complex nano-micro compounds, materials’ characterization is difficult due to the three-dimensional complexity of the structures. We originally integrated image analysis with simulation in order to derive 3D structure from 2D images (SEM) and projections (TEM).[3,4] The most fruitful result was however the insight into how easy it is to create adaptable software that analyzes images and keeps track of all the data, calculating anything desired such as comparisons with numerical simulations, all in one integrated system.[5,6] Many of the previously discussed issues, for example error reporting, are thereby basically already automatically solved!

Adapting software sounds prohibitively difficult: Who in my lab can modify software? Nowadays everybody! Today, programming is done partially graphically, for example with LabView™, where no programming language appears anymore. We work with Mathematica and therefore with programming code, but we mostly just download parts of code and adapt them playfully until they behave as desired. To whomever such does not count as the ability to program, we cannot program!

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Another article on QC where the author is not well connected or knowledgeable about the details on QC’s advancement on entanglement. I suggest the author to learn about the use of Synthetic Diamonds in controlling and managing entanglement plus we now have a way to detect & trace high-dimensional entanglement that I shared 20 days ago. I suggest if authors wish to write on QC please make sure that you have the latest information so that your better informed.

The computers of today have just about hit their limits, and scientists around the world are scrambling to build the first viable quantum computer — a machine that could increase processing speeds 100-million-fold.

The biggest challenge in scaling up a quantum computer is figuring out how to entangle enough quantum bits (qubits) to perform calculations, but a team of engineers in the US say they might finally have a solution.

Quantum computers are set to revolutionise how we process data in the future, because they’re not limited to the 1s and 0s of binary code that today’s computers rely on. That binary code is holding us back, because if you can only use a combination of 1s and 0s, there’s a finite amount of data that can be processed, no matter how fast you go.

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Aalto University scientists have broken the world record by fourteen fold in the energy resolution of thermal photodetection.

The record was made using a partially superconducting microwave detector. The discovery may lead to ultrasensitive cameras and accessories for the emerging quantum computer.

Artistic image of a hybrid superconductor-metal microwave detector

Figure 1: Artistic image of a hybrid superconductor-metal microwave detector. (Image: Ella Maru Sudio)

The first of the two key enabling developments is the new detector design consisting of tiny pieces of superconducting aluminum and a golden nanowire. This design guarantees both efficient absorption of incoming photons and very sensitive readout. The whole detector is smaller than a single human blood cell.

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