U of Michigan creates first Quantum Microchip

zigziggityzoo writes "According to this article, The University of Michigan has created the first Quantum Microchip, which could eventually lead to the first instance of Quantum Computing ever." The bad news? We won't be seeing any notebooks or handhelds with quantum chips in the near future.

Uh... Chem 101 anyone ?

[cyberfunk2]

I'm sure they're doing some great work... but my chemistry tells me something a little funny about this quote:

"The cadmium atom that has lost an electron becomes a negatively charged ion, which can then be controlled with an electrical field," said Daniel Stick, a doctoral student in the University of Michigan's physics department who participated in the work.

Excuse me ? Generally when atoms LOSE electrons, they become POSITIVE. Quantum wierdness indeed.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Am I missing something?

[Merle Darling]

From TFA, emphasis added:
"The cadmium atom that has lost an electron becomes a negatively charged ion, which can then be controlled with an electrical field," said Daniel Stick, a doctoral student in the University of Michigan's physics department who participated in the work.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but basic high school chemistry says that an atom that loses an electron has an overall positive charge, which makes it a positively charged ion or a cation [wikipedia.org]...

I'm not sure I want this guy designing my computer. =)

Re:Here's a Question for you:

[centie]

The problem is that there are only a very limited number of quantum algorithms which give a significant increase in performance over classical computing. Infact, there's only really two main classes; those based on Shors quantum fourier transform and those based on Grovers quantum search. So the possibility for exponential (Shor) or quadratic (Grover) performance gains, at the moment, is only available for a very limited number of problems. Not to say that in the future someone wont develope an algorithm which allows doom to be run faster, just at the moment its not known.

For the first replier, qubits do NOT have three states of 1, 0 and 1&0. They are a superposition of 1 and 0. Think of it like a globe with 1 at the north pole and 0 at the south, the value of the qubit can be any point on the surface of the globe. This gives an infinte number of values, not just 3.

Mods missed the reference

[jcuervo]

At the end of every (?) episode of Quantum Leap, Sam (Scott Bakula) (and that holographic dude, once or twice) would say "Oh, boy" once he jumped into a new body and realized his new predicament.

Can't believe the mods missed it. :-(

Technical writeup (arXiv)

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the peer-reviewed paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0601052 [arxiv.org]

U of Michigian Manuscript

[Anonymous Coward]

http://iontrap.physics.lsa.umich.edu/publications/ archive/naturephys_2005_stick_GaAs.pdf [umich.edu]

Re:Another stunt by a university

[fizzyabbo]

A quick search on Google would suggests that there is increasing interest in this field. How aboutIBM [ibm.com], as well as a start up company called D-Wave Systems [dwavesys.com] located in Vancouver, for a start.

As for my two cents, don't bet on an up-and-comer quantum-computer-making-business "knock them [the processor giants] them of their perch". The article (in addition to previous stories) doesn't predict a quantum computer that you'll be able to buy off the shelf and use on your desktop. Perhaps a look at the current prospects for implementations of quantum computers, and a miniscule amount of common sense would convince you of this unliklihood.

Re:Schrodinger's computer

[BungoMan85]

That's pretty much how it is for me too. I run Windows XP and it NEVER crashes unless it has to do with graphics card drivers (I updated my drivers for my nVidia card and now Doom 3 causes auto reboots... lame). Seriously though, I think people who make Windows NT/2K/XP crash more than a few times a year are probably doing something really dumb. I don't even see how that is possible. Now on Windows 9x.... man... if you can get a system running that to stay up more than two days you are lucky.

No, I'm not an MS appologist. I just don't ever have any problems with Windows cause I'm not dumb.