A combined team of physicists from CalTech, MIT and Harvard, have developed a tracking beam system that allows them to seize individual atoms and move them wherever they want them to go. This technology, the moving of atoms, is one of the foundations of quantum computing. The atoms, or quibits, are what are essential to a quantum computer as opposed to regular information bits in a standard computer.
What this research team has done, however, is something that has never been done before. Usually, to move an atom takes precision and a huge investment in time. The combined research team has taken 50 atoms of rubidium and managed to manipulate and move them at will with the help of 100 “optical tweezers”. These tweezers are extremely focused beams of pure light that seem to trap the atoms between two of them and move them at will.
The atoms were isolated in a vacuum and they formed into small clouds. The researchers then focused two of the tweezer beams onto an atom.When the atom was seized by the two beams, it became locked into the beams and the beams simply manipulated and moved them wherever the scientists wanted them to go.
In addition, this combined team was able to manipulate and move all fifty atoms at once as opposed to a standard moving of only one at a time. They focused the one hundred light beams and seized all of the fifty atoms and took photos of the operation with special cameras so that they could confirm the trapping and movement of the atoms.
They were able to arrange the atoms into certain patterns as they desired. Specific patterns were programmed in so that everything could be tested properly. When, according to the photo, a pattern wasn’t forming as it had been programmed to do, other tractor beam tweezers were turned on to grab and arrange the atoms as they were needed for the particular design that had been programmed.
To assemble all of the fifty atoms took 400 milliseconds to accomplish. The time, of course, is faster with less than fifty atoms. The scientists are looking to build a two dimensional tweezer system that will allow for greater manipulation. As of right now, they can only form the atoms into a straight line.
The other challenge, with regard to how it would affect a quantum computer, is that they can only hold those atoms in place for about 10 seconds. A quantum computer would need the atoms held in place for at least 100 seconds.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay