Raytheon’s BBN Technologies unit said Tuesday that it has been able to couple light and superconductors in a breakthrough that could lead to a quantum computing building block.
The company described its breakthrough as a “major advance in quantum information technology.”
In a recent paper published in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters, Raytheon BBN physicists found that superconducting artificial atoms absorb photons at a particular frequency. But if you apply a second field at a different frequency the absorption is prevented and the artificial atom becomes transparent.
Add it up and the discovery opens a possibility “in the quest for efficient coupling of superconducting quantum bits, or qubits.”
In a statement, Will Kelly, one of the BBN scientists who authored the report, said:
Superconducting artificial atoms offer fast and reliable processing, and light offers fast and reliable transmission over long distances. Combining light and superconducting artificial atoms offers the best of both and is a promising development for building a large-scale quantum computer.
The next chore for Raytheon BBN is to show that it can slow light down. If a system can be built to store light, a big piece of the quantum computing puzzle would be found.
