Quantum computer builders use exotic materials that are not commercially viable for the mass market — from super-cooled superconductors to tubes full of gas ions cooled by lasers. All this may be about to change.
Now researchers have found that by combining two relatively cheap and plentiful solid-state materials (namely ferromagnets and topological insulators), they posit that frictionless quantum highways can be constructed that conduct and switch qubit flows in a way that mimics transistors.
"Ferromagnetism alters the electronic structure of a topological insulator by opening up a mini-gap within the bulk bandgap," said Cui-zu Chang, a post-doctoral researcher working in the lab of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Ju Li, in an interview with EE Times. "In addition, it reaches a quantum phase transition called a 'quantum anomalous Hall state,' where a dissipation-less chiral conducting channel opens at the edge of the sample exactly at zero magnetic field."
As a result, these unique properties at the interface of a ferromagnetic material and a topological insulator could be the key to producing the "perfect quantum switch" with frictionless transmission of qubits in a material that is relatively inexpensive to construct and requires even less energy to operate.
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