The discovery and application by IBM researcher Stuart Parkin and his colleagues of a “spin valve”—essentially the capability to alter the magnetic state of materials at the atomic level—changed the landscape of magnetic data storage by dramatically increasing storage capacity. This helped pave the way for some of today’s most popular devices and online applications.
The word spintronics—short for spin electronics—was coined in the 1990s to describe devices that take advantage of “spin,” a quantum-mechanical property of an electron that takes only two values: spin-up and spin-down. Spintronics research flowered following the discovery of the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect in the late 1980s. IBM Almaden Research Center researchers realized that GMR could be used to make more sensitive hard disk drive read heads.
Parkin discovered the fundamental underlying spintronics phenomena that made the spin valve a reality while researching novel properties of superlattices formed from combinations of various magnetic and non-magnetic materials based on flowing charge currents through these superlattices. By working at the atomic scale, he discovered that by sandwiching a non-magnetic layer of material between two magnetic layers, where each of the layers was just a few atoms thick, and by applying small magnetic fields, the current flowing through the sandwich could significantly be changed. The reason was that within the magnetic layers, the electrical current, which was composed of negatively charged electrons, became “spin-polarized”: all the electrons’ spins became oriented either “up” or “down,” depending on the magnetic orientation of these layers—just like nanoscopic compass needles, which point to either the North or South Pole. Small magnetic fields reorient these compass needles. This effectively created the ability to turn the “spin-polarized” current on or off—just like a valve.
The spin valve also created the ability to detect more minute magnetic impulses when flown over a magnetic hard drive. This ability allowed for vastly more data to be written to and stored on a hard drive than was possible before the discovery of GMR.
The first use of spin-valve sensors in hard disk drive read heads was in the
“An I.B.M. research fellow largely unknown outside a small fraternity of physicists, Mr. Parkin puttered for two years in a lab in the early 1990s, trying to find a way to commercialize an odd magnetic effect of quantum mechanics he had observed at supercold temperatures. With the help of a research assistant, he was able to manipulate the alignment of electronics to alter the magnetic state of tiny areas of a magnetic data storage disc, making it possible to store and retrieve information in a smaller amount of space. The huge increases in digital storage made possible by giant magnetoresistance, or GMR, made consumer audio and video iPods, as well as Google-style data centers, a reality.”
“Redefining the Architecture of Memory,” The New York TimesSeptember 11, 2007
“The first mass-produced spintronic device has already revolutionized the hard-disk drive industry. Introduced in 1997, the giant magnetoresistive (GMR) head, developed at the IBM Almaden lab, is a super-sensitive magnetic-field sensor that enabled a 40-fold increase in data density over the past seven years. Another multilayered spintronic structure is at the heart of the high-speed, nonvolatile magnetic random access memory (MRAM), currently being developed by a handful of companies.”
“IBM, Stanford Collaborate on World-Class Spintronics Research,” PhysOrg.comApril 28, 2004
“Magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) is expected to revolutionize the memory market and contribute to the development of advanced and versatile computing and personal devices. Promising advances such as instantly bootable computers, MRAM could well be the next big thing in spintronics. Quantum computation is perhaps one of the most exciting potential applications of spintronics. However, harnessing the power of the quantum states to enable information processing and storage is not easy. The evolution of MRAMs and various spin-based technologies could be critically important in facilitating the development of the first quantum computer.”
Spintronics—An Emerging Technology Analysis (Technical Insights), Frost & Sullivan Research ServiceMarch 28, 2005
“Think of one combined unit that integrates logic, storage, and communication for computing. We envision using a mixture of optical, electronic, and photonic techniques to prepare and manipulate spin-based information. The spin could be stored in semiconductors, run at frequencies many times faster than today’s technology and work at room temperature. And all in a single nanostructure. Then imagine millions of these nanostructures working together in a device small by human standards. What such devices will do is up to scientists and engineers to determine. But the most exciting prospects are the revolutionary ones rather than simple extrapolations of today’s technology.”
“Controlling Electron Spin Electrically,” Science a GoGoDecember 28, 2001
These huge increases in storage capacity made possible the evolution of giant data centers in the “cloud.” Perhaps most importantly, the ability to store and access huge amounts of data in worldwide networks helped create the information-based world of today.
In 2005 alone, the amount of data that could be stored by all the spin-valve-enabled hard drives sold equaled all of the analog data available in the world at that time—approximately 100 exabytes.
Since 2007, the basic spin valve has evolved to a related thin-layered structure—magnetic tunnel junction—that displays giant tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR), a phenomenon where electrons tunnel through a thin insulator. The non-magnetic layer in a GMR spin valve has been replaced by this insulator, which, when formed from “magnesium oxide,” is a spin filter that only allows electrons of one spin direction through it, like a gatekeeper. The current that flows through magnesium oxide is composed of electrons that are almost 100 percent spin-up or spin-down, depending on the magnetic orientation of the surrounding magnetic layers. This means the TMR signal is much larger than that from a GMR spin valve: indeed it is almost 100 times larger. TMR is also the basis of magnetic random access memory (MRAM), a new type of non-volatile memory that uses magnetic moments to retain data instead of electrical charges.
Stuart Parkin is now leading a team of IBM researchers in studying Racetrack Memory, a radically different non-volatile memory technology proposed by Parkin in 2004 that is based on a recently discovered spintronics phenomena. Racetrack memory uses currents of spin-oriented electrons to “move” magnetic regions along magnetic racetracks—nanoscopic magnetic wires. Racetrack memory is one of a number of new technologies being explored that could offer higher storage density than comparable devices such as flash memory, and eventually replace disk drives with a solid-state memory device.
Throughout its history, IBM has collaborated with external entities, including universities, organizations and other corporations to advance research in a variety of technologies. In 2004, the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center (SpinAps) was established in California. Within SpinAps, scientists and engineers from IBM Almaden Research Center are working together with Stanford faculty, students and post-doctoral fellows to study the theoretical and practical fundamentals of spintronics, and to develop advanced technologies built on those fundamentals.
Spintronics may also enable the leap to quantum computing where units of quantum information known as “qubits” can occupy spin-up and spin-down states simultaneously, and so allow for massive increases in computational power.
Selected team members who contributed to this Icon of Progress:
- Dr. Stuart Parkin IBM Fellow, manager of the Magnetoelectronics group at the IBM Almaden Research Center, co-director of the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center
- Dr. Stuart A. Wolf Program manager at DARPA; coined the term spintronics in 1996
- Dr. James S. Harris Co-director of the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center; James and Ellenor Chesebrough Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department of Stanford University
- Dr. Schoucheng Zhang Co-director of the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center; J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor in Physics at Stanford University
- Dr. David J. Smith Regents’ Professor of Physics at Arizona State University


In logic circuits, the Toffoli gate (also CCNOT gate), invented by Tommaso Toffoli, is a universal reversible logic gate, which means that any reversible circuit can be constructed from Toffoli gates. It is also known as the "controlled-controlled-not" gate, which describes its action. It has 3-bit inputs and outputs; if the first two bits are set, it inverts the third bit, otherwise all bits stay the same.
A logic gate L is reversible if, for any output y, there is a unique input x such that applying L(x) = y. If a gate L is reversible, there is an inverse gate L′ which maps y to x for which L′(y) = x. From common logic gates, NOT is reversible, as can be seen from its truthtable below.
The common AND gate is not reversible however. The inputs 00, 01 and 10 are all mapped to the output 0.
Reversible gates have been studied since the 1960s. The original motivation was that reversible gates dissipate less heat (or, in principle, no heat). In a normal gate, input states are lost, since less information is present in the output than was present at the input. This loss of information loses energy to the surrounding area as heat, because of thermodynamic entropy. Another way to understand this is that charges on a circuit are grounded and thus flow away, taking a small quantity of energy with them when they change state. A reversible gate only moves the states around, and since no information is lost, energy is conserved.
More recent motivation comes from quantum computing. Quantum mechanics requires the transformations to be reversible but allows more general states of the computation (superpositions). Thus, the reversible gates form a subset of gates allowed by quantum mechanics and, if we can compute something reversibly, we can also compute it on a quantum computer.
Universality and Toffoli gate
Any reversible gate must have the same number of input and output bits, by the pigeonhole principle. For one input bit, there are two possible reversible gates. One of them is NOT. The other is the identity gate which maps its input to the output unchanged. For two input bits, the only non-trivial gate is the controlled NOT gate which XORs the first bit to the second bit and leaves the first bit unchanged.
|Truth table||Permutation matrix form|
Unfortunately, there are reversible functions that cannot be computed using just those gates. In other words, the set consisting of NOT and XOR gates is not universal. If we want to compute an arbitrary function using reversible gates, we need another gate. One possibility is the Toffoli gate, proposed in 1980 by Toffoli.
This gate has 3-bit inputs and outputs. If the first two bits are set, it flips the third bit. The following is a table of the input and output bits:
|Truth table||Permutation matrix form|
It can be also described as mapping bits a, b and c to a, b and c XOR (a AND b).
The Toffoli gate is universal; this means that for any Boolean function f(x1, x2, ..., xm), there is a circuit consisting of Toffoli gates which takes x1, x2, ..., xm and some extra bits set to 0 or 1 and outputs x1, x2, ..., xm, f(x1, x2, ..., xm), and some extra bits (called garbage). Essentially, this means that one can use Toffoli gates to build systems that will perform any desired Boolean function computation in a reversible manner.
Related logic gates
- The Fredkin gate is a reversible 3-bit gate that swaps the last two bits if the first bit is 1; a controlled-swap operation.
- The n-bit Toffoli gate is a generalization of Toffoli gate. It takes n bits x1, x2, ..., xn as inputs and outputs n bits. The first n−1 output bits are just x1, ..., xn−1. The last output bit is (x1 AND ... AND xn−1) XOR xn.
- The Toffoli gate can be realized by five two-qubit quantum gates.
- This gate is one of the reversible-gate cases that can be modeled with billiard balls (see Billiard-ball computer). The billiard ball modeling was introduced by Fredkin and Toffoli. An example of how the collisions are used to model an electronic gate is shown in the figure.
Relation to quantum computing
Any reversible gate can be implemented on a quantum computer, and hence the Toffoli gate is also a quantum operator. However, the Toffoli gate can not be used for universal quantum computation, though it does mean that a quantum computer can implement all possible classical computations. The Toffoli gate has to be implemented along with single qubit gates to be used for universal quantum computation. A quantum mechanics-based Toffoli gate has been successfully realized in January 2009 at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
- Technical Report MIT/LCS/TM-151 (1980) and an adapted and condensed version: Toffoli, Tommaso (1980). J. W. de Bakker and J. van Leeuwen, ed. "Reversible computing". Automata, Languages and Programming, Seventh Colloquium. Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands: Springer Verlag. pp. 632–644. doi:10.1007/3-540-10003-2_104. ISBN 3-540-10003-2.
- Barenco, Adriano; Bennett, Charles H.; Cleve, Richard; DiVincenzo, David P.; Margolus, Norman; Shor, Peter; Sleator, Tycho; Smolin, John A.; Weinfurter, Harald (Nov 1995). "Elementary gates for quantum computation". Phys. Rev. A (American Physical Society) 52 (5): 3457–3467. arXiv:quant-ph/9503016. Bibcode:1995PhRvA..52.3457B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.52.3457. PMID 9912645.
- Fredkin, Edward; Toffoli, Tommaso (April 1982). "Conservative logic". International Journal of Theoretical Physics (Springer Netherlands) 21 (3): 219–253. Bibcode:1982IJTP...21..219F. doi:10.1007/BF01857727. ISSN 0020-7748.
- Monz, T.; Kim, K.; Hänsel, W.; Riebe, M.; Villar, A. S.; Schindler, P.; Chwalla, M.; Hennrich, M.; Blatt, R. (Jan 2009). "Realization of the Quantum Toffoli Gate with Trapped Ions". R. (American Physical Society) 102 (4): 040501. arXiv:0804.0082. Bibcode:2009PhRvL.102d0501M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.040501.


Will we ever realize the sci-fi dream of human teleportation? Physicists have already successfully teleported tiny objects. (See Beam Me Up, Schrödinger for more on the mechanics of quantum teleportation.) What will it take to extend the technique to a living, breathing human being?
Quantum teleportation is possible because of two quantum phenomena that are utterly foreign to our everyday experience: entanglement and superposition. Entanglement is the connection that links the quantum states of two particles, even when they are separated: The two particles can be described only by their joint properties.
Though there is no classical analogue for entanglement, in his book Dance of the Photons Zeilinger imagined how entanglement might work if it could be applied to a pair of ordinary dice instead of a pair of subatomic particles: “The science fiction Quantum Entanglement Generator produces pairs of entangled dice. These dice do not show any number before they are observed.” In other words, they are in a superposition of states where there is an equal chance of producing any number between one and six. “When one die is observed, it randomly chooses to show a number of dots. Then, the other distant die instantly shows the same number.”
This works no matter how far apart the dice are. They can be sitting beside each other or on opposite ends of the universe. In either case, when the particle over here is measured to be in one of many possible states, then we can infer the state of the particle over there, even though no energy, no mass, and no information travels between A and B when the first one is observed. The state of particle B simply is what it is. The difficult concept is that B’s state corresponds with the state of the measured particle A.
Entanglement is so confounding that in the early days of quantum theory, when entanglement was supported only by thought experiments and math on paper, Einstein famously derided it as “spooky action at a distance.” Today, though, entanglement has been thoroughly tested and verified. In fact, entangling particles isn’t even the hard part: For physicists, the most difficult task is maintaining the entanglement. An unexpected particle from the surrounding environment—something as insubstantial as a photon—can jostle one of the entangled particles, changing its quantum state. These interactions must be carefully controlled or else this fragile connection will be broken.
If entanglement is one gear in the quantum machinery of teleportation, the second critical gear is superposition. Remember the thought experiment about Schrödinger’s cat? A cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are all placed in a sealed box. If the source decays and emits a particle, then the flask breaks and the cat dies. While the box is closed, we can’t know whether the cat is living or dead. Moreover, the cat can be considered both alive and dead until the box is opened: The cat will stay in a superposition of the two states until a “measurement is made—that is, until we look in the box and observe that the cat is either alive or dead.
Schrödinger never tried this on a real cat—in fact, he drew up the thought experiment just to demonstrate the apparently preposterous implications of quantum theory, and to force theorists to examine what constitutes a “measurement”—but today scientists have demonstrated that superposition is real using systems that are increasingly large (albeit still much smaller than a cat). In 2010, a group of researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara demonstrated superposition in a tiny mechanical resonator—like a tuning fork, it vibrates at a characteristic frequency, but just like the cat it doesn’t exist in a single position until measured. Last year, another group of researchers demonstrated quantum superposition in systems of as many as 430 atoms.
Before superposition and entanglement appear in a human-scale teleporter, if ever, they will be harnessed for multiple applications in computing. Quantum cryptography uses entanglement to encode messages and detect eavesdropping. Because observation perturbs entanglement, eavesdropping destroys information carried by entangled particles. And if two people each receive entangled particles, they can generate an entirely secure key. Quantum cryptography is an active area of research and some systems are already on the market.
Quantum mechanical superposition and entanglement could also be exploited to make faster and more powerful computers that store information in quantum states, known as “qubits,” instead of traditional electronic bits. Quantum computers could solve problems that are intractable for today’s computers. Whether it’s possible to make a working quantum computer is still in question, but roughly two dozen research groups around the world are avidly investigating methods and architectures.
So we know how to teleport one particle. But what if we want to make like Captain Kirk and teleport an entire human being?
Remember that we wouldn’t be moving Kirk’s molecules from one place to another. He would interact with a suite of previously-entangled particles, and when we read the quantum state we would destroy the complex quantum information that makes his molecules into him while instantly providing the information required to recreate his quantum state from other atoms in a distant location.
Quantum mechanics doesn’t forbid it. The rules of quantum mechanics still apply whether you’re talking about a system of two particles or human being made of 1027 atoms. “The size doesn’t matter in and of itself,” says Andrew Cleland, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Macroscopic systems like superconductors and Bose-Einstein condensates show quantum effects while arbitrarily large.
From an engineering standpoint, though, teleporting larger objects becomes an increasingly tough problem. Cleland comments, “Taking any object and putting it in a quantum state is hard. Two is multiply hard.” Maintaining entanglement between particle requires isolating them from interactions that would break their entanglement. We don’t want Captain Kirk to end up like The Fly, so we need to keep the particles absolutely isolated.
What if we start with something simpler: Instead of teleporting a person, can we teleport a much smaller living thing—like a virus?
In 2009, Oriol Romero-Isart of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Quantenoptik in Germany and his colleagues proposed just such an experiment. Using current technology, it should be possible to demonstrate superposition in a virus, they argued. They didn’t try it, but laid out a procedure: First, store the virus in a vacuum to reduce interactions with the environment, and then cool it to its quantum ground state before pumping it with enough laser light to create a superposition of two different energy states.
This is possible in theory because some viruses can survive cold and vacuum. But humans are hot, and that thermal energy is a problem. “We have quadrillions of quantum states superimposed at the same time, dynamically changing,” says Cleland. Not only are we hot, but we interact strongly with our environment: We touch the ground, we breathe. Ironically, our need to interact with our environment, our sheer physicality, could come between us and the dream of human teleportation.


March 17, 2013 | 3
Though the concept of the robot seems to be a modern and a relatively new idea, they have been around for years. The first recording in literature of a possible description of the robot is found in the Iliad in reference to a “a three-legged cauldron that had ears for handles”. Later on, in 1900, we were introduced to Tik-Tok in Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz. The word robot was first used in 1920 by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). This would be the first dramatization of a robot under this name. However, robots would come to life and be used for practical purposes in 1962. General Motors was the first company to use a robot for industrial purposes.
Since then, robots have been used in many ways. They have come in all shapes and sizes. They have been used in the medical field, the armed forces, and in the space program.
Now as we face the 21st century, technology evolves more. A new kind of robot is being studied and researched. This robot is called the quantum robot.
The quantum robot is the idea of combining quantum theory with robot technology. In other words, it is a practical use of the combination of quantum computing and robot technology. Quantum computing involves using quantum systems and quantum states to do computations.
A robot is an automated machine that is capable of doing a set of complex tasks. In some applications of robots, the programming used to run the robots may be based on artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a computer system to operate in a manner similar to human intelligence. Think of artificial intelligence as if you were training a machine to act like a human. Essentially, quantum robots are complex quantum systems.They are mobile systems with on board quantum computers that interact with their environments. Several programs would be involved in the operation of the robot. These programs would be quantum searching algorithms and quantum reinforcement learning algorithms.
Quantum reinforcement learning is based on superposition of the quantum state and quantum parallelism. A quantum state is a system that is a set of quantum numbers. The four basic quantum numbers represent the energy level, angular momentum, spin, and magnetization. In the superposition of quantum states, the idea is to get one state to look like another.
Let’s say I have two dogs. One dog knows how to fetch a bone (energy level), sit up (angular momentum), give a high five (spin), and shake hands (magnetization). Now, let’s apply the superposition of quantum states. Since one dog has been trained and given the commands, the other dog must learn to mimic or copy what the first dog did. Each time a command is achieved, reinforcement is given. The reinforcement for the dog would be a bone (or no bone if the command is not achieved).
In quantum reinforcement learning, it is slightly different. The idea would be similar to an “If-Then” statement. An example would be if the quantum state has a certain energy level, then the angular momentum is certain value. This idea of “If-Then” statements in the quantum world leads to an idea which can be a topic of its own; Quantum Logic.
Quantum parallelism simply means that computations can happen at the same time. This allows for all of the quantum numbers of the quantum system to be measured at the same time. If there are multiple quantum systems then; by using the concept of parallelism, all systems can be measured at the same time.
Programs used for “quantum searching” are based on quantum random walks. Quantum random walks use probability amplitudes. A probability amplitude allows us to determine that there is more than one possible quantum state. In the classical world, if you type a word “Quantum” in the search engine, you get many results. You may have a tough time finding a needle in a haystack if you use just one word, but if you want to refine your search; let’s say “Quantum Random Walks”, then it narrows the search. The same principle applies in quantum computing to get more refined results. However, you are not necessarily searching for words but you are finding information that may correlate to a quantum state.
What would be the advantages of the Quantum Robot over the Robot?
Quantum robots are more intricate in examining their environments and doing tasks as they apply quantum effects . Because of the complexity in quantum computing, the expectations of the quantum robots would be that they are faster, more accurate, and are able to multitask better than the standard robot.
The quantum robots may be able one day to give us better medical diagnoses and better data interpretation in other research fields such as defense research. In medicine, they may be able to detect pathological changes in the body by being injected through the bloodstream. In the space program, they may be able to examine the delicate environments on other planets. In the military, they may be able to detect changes in the magnetic and electric fields. They may be able to help us detect early warnings of disasters more efficiently.
Secrets of the Universe: Past, Present, FutureX


August 15, 2000 -- At a technical conference today at Stanford University, IBM-Almaden researcher Isaac Chuang described his team's experiments that demonstrated the world's most advanced quantum computer and the tremendous potential such devices have to solve problems that conventional computers cannot handle.
"Quantum computing begins where Moore's Law ends -- about the year 2020, when circuit features are predicted to be the size of atoms and molecules," says Isaac L. Chuang, who led the team of scientists from IBM Research, Stanford University and the University of Calgary. "Indeed, the basic elements of quantum computers are atoms and molecules."
Quantum computers get their power by taking advantage of certain quantum physics properties of atoms or nuclei that allow them to work together as quantum bits, or "qubits," to be the computer's processor and memory. By interacting with each other while being isolated from the external environment, theorists have predicted -- and this new result confirms -- that qubits could perform certain calculations exponentially faster than conventional computers.
The new quantum computer contains five qubits -- five fluorine atoms within a molecule specially designed so the fluorine nuclei's "spins" can interact with each other as qubits, be programmed by radiofrequency pulses and be detected by nuclear magnetic resonance instruments similar to those commonly used in hospitals and chemistry labs.
Using the molecule, Chuang's team solved in one step a mathematical problem for which conventional computers require repeated cycles. The problem is called "order-finding" -- finding the period of a particular function -- which is typical of many basic mathematical problems that underlie important applications such as cryptography.
While the potential for quantum computing is huge and recent progress is encouraging, the challenges remain daunting. IBM's five-qubit quantum computer is a research instrument. Commercial quantum computers are still many years away, since they must have at least several dozen qubits before difficult real-world problems can be solved.
"This result gives us a great deal of confidence in understanding how quantum computing can evolve into a future technology," Chuang says. "It reinforces the growing realization that quantum computers may someday be able to live up to their potential of solving in remarkably short times problems that are so complex that the most powerful supercomputers can't calculate the answers even if they worked on them for millions of years."
Chuang says the first applications are likely to be as a co-processor for specific functions, such as database lookup and finding the solution to a difficult mathematical problem. Accelerating word processing or Web surfing would not be well-suited to a quantum computer's capabilities.
Chuang presented his team's latest result today at Stanford University at the Hot Chips 2000 conference, which is organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Computer Society. His co-authors are Gregory Breyta and Costantino S. Yannoni of IBM-Almaden, Stanford University graduate students Lieven M.K .Vandersypen and Matthias Steffen, and theoretical computer scientist Richard Cleve of the University of Calgary. The team has also submitted a technical report of their experiment to the scientific journal, Physical Review Letters.
History of Quantum ComputingWhen quantum computers were first proposed in the 1970s and 1980s (by theorists such as the late Richard Feynmann of California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.; Paul Benioff of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois; David Deutsch of Oxford U. in England., and Charles Bennett of IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.), many scientists doubted that they could ever be made practical. But in 1994, Peter Shor of AT&T Research described a specific quantum algorithm for factoring large numbers exponentially faster than conventional computers -- fast enough to break the security of many public-key cryptosystems. Shor's algorithm opened the doors to much more effort aimed at realizing the quantum computers' potential. Significant progress has been made by numerous research groups around the world.
Chuang is currently among the world's leading quantum computing experimentalists. He also led the teams that demonstrated the world's first 2-qubit quantum computer (in 1998 at University of California Berkeley) and 3-qubit quantum computer (1999 at IBM-Almaden). The order-finding result announced today is the most complex algorithm yet to be demonstrated by a quantum computer.
Note: Earlier this year, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratories announced they had achieved quantum coherence in a seven-qubit molecule. While this is a necessary condition for achieving a quantum computer, they have not yet used the molecule as a seven-qubit quantum computer to solve a problem or to implement a quantum algorithm.
How a Quantum Computer Works
A quantum particle, such as an electron or atomic nucleus, can exist in two states at the same time -- say, with its spin in the up and down states. This constitutes a quantum bit, or qubit. When the spin is up, the atom can be read as a 1, and the spin down can be read as a 0. This corresponds with the digital 1s and 0s that make up the language of traditional computers. The spin of an atom up or down is the same as turning a transistor on and off, both represent data in terms of 1s and 0s.
Qubits differ from traditional digital computer bits, however, because an atom or nucleus can be in a state of "superposition," representing simultaneously both 0 and 1 and everything in between. Moreover, without interference from the external environment, the spins can be "entangled" in such a way that effectively wires together a quantum computer's qubits. Two entangled atoms act in concert with each other -- when one is in the up position, the other is guaranteed to be in the down position.
The combination of superposition and entanglement permit a quantum computer to have enormous power, allowing it to perform calculations in a massively parallel, non-linear manner exponentially faster than a conventional computer. For certain types of calculations -- such as complex algorithms for cryptography or searching -- a quantum computer can perform billions of calculations in a single step. So, instead of solving the problem by adding all the numbers in order, a quantum computer would add all the numbers at the same time.
To input and read the data in a quantum computer, Chuang's team uses a nuclear magnetic resonance machine, which uses a giant magnet and is similar to the medical devices commonly used to image human soft tissues. A tiny test-tube filled with the special molecule is placed inside the machine and the scientists use radio-frequency pulses as software to alter atomic spins in the particular way that enables the nuclei to perform calculations.
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A Chinese satellite has split pairs of "entangled photons" and transmitted them to separate ground stations 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) apart, smashing the previous distance record for such a feat and opening new possibilities in quantum communication.
In quantum physics, when particles interact with each other in certain ways they become "entangled." This essentially means they remain connected even when separated by large distances, so that an action performed on one affects the other.
In a new study published online today (June 15) in the journal Science, researchers report the successful distribution of entangled photon pairs to two locations on Earth separated by 747.5 miles (1,203 km). [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]
Quantum entanglement has interesting applications for testing the fundamental laws of physics, but also for creating exceptionally secure communication systems, scientists have said. That's because quantum mechanics states that measuring a quantum system inevitably disturbs it, so any attempt to eavesdrop is impossible to hide.
But, it's hard to distribute entangled particles — normally photons — over large distances. When traveling through air or over fiber-optic cables, the environment interferes with the particles, so with greater distances, the signal decays and becomes too weak to be useful.
In 2003, Pan Jianwei, a professor of quantum physics at the University of Science and Technology of China, started work on a satellite-based system designed to beam entangled photon pairs down to ground stations. The idea was that because most of the particle's journey would be through the vacuum of space, this system would introduce considerably less environmental interference.
"Many people then thought it [was] a crazy idea, because it was very challenging already doing the sophisticated quantum-optics experiments inside a well-shielded optical table," Pan told Live Science. "So how can you do similar experiments at thousand-kilometers distance scale and with the optical elements vibrating and moving at a speed of 8 kilometers per second [5 miles per second]?"
In the new study, researchers used China's Micius satellite, which was launched last year, to transmit the entangled photon pairs. The satellite features an ultrabright entangled photon source and a high-precision acquiring, pointing and tracking (APT) system that uses beacon lasers on the satellite and at three ground stations to line up the transmitter and receivers.
Once the photons reached the ground stations, the scientists carried out tests and confirmed that the particles were still entangled despite having traveled between 994 miles and 1,490 miles (1,600 and 2,400 km), depending on what stage of its orbit the satellite was positioned at.
Only the lowest 6 miles (10 km) of Earth's atmosphere are thick enough to cause significant interference with the photons, the scientists said. This means the overall efficiency of their link was vastly higher than previous methods for distributing entangled photons via fiber-optic cables, according to the scientists. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]
"We have already achieved a two-photon entanglement distribution efficiency a trillion times more efficient than using the best telecommunication fibers," Pan said. "We have done something that was absolutely impossible without the satellite."
Apart from carrying out experiments, one of the potential uses for this kind of system is for "quantum key distribution," in which quantum communication systems are used to share an encryption key between two parties that is impossible to intercept without alerting the users. When combined with the correct encryption algorithm, this system is uncrackable even if encrypted messages are sent over normal communication channels, experts have said.
Artur Ekert, a professor of quantum physics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, was the first to describe how entangled photons could be used to transmit an encryption key.
"The Chinese experiment is quite a remarkable technological achievement," Ekert told Live Science. "When I proposed the entangled-based quantum key distribution back in 1991 when I was a student in Oxford, I did not expect it to be elevated to such heights!"
The current satellite is not quite ready for use in practical quantum communication systems, though, according to Pan. For one, its relatively low orbit means each ground station has coverage for only about 5 minutes each day, and the wavelength of photons used means it can only operate at night, he said.
Boosting coverage times and areas will mean launching new satellites with higher orbits, Pan said, but this will require bigger telescopes, more precise tracking and higher link efficiency. Daytime operation will require the use of photons in the telecommunications wavelengths, he added.
But while developing future quantum communication networks will require considerable work, Thomas Jennewein, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing in Canada, said Pan's group has demonstrated one of the key building blocks.
"I have worked in this line of research since 2000 and researched on similar implementations of quantum- entanglement experiments from space, and I can therefore very much attest to the boldness, dedication and skills that this Chinese group has shown," he told Live Science.
Original article on Live Science.


Quantum dice debut
Technology Research News
Researchers have overcome a major obstacle
to generating random numbers on quantum computers by limiting the possibilities
in the otherwise unlimited randomness of a set of quantum particles.
Random numbers play a key role in classical computing by providing
an element of chance in games and simulations, a reliable method for encrypting
messages, and a means of accurately sampling huge amounts of data.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
the National Atomic Energy Commission in Argentina have shown that short
sequences of random operations -- randomly shifting laser pulses or magnetic
fields -- acting on a string of quantum bits can, in effect, generate
random configurations of qubits.
Being able to generate random numbers in quantum computing could
make quantum computers easier to build by countering the noise that eventually
destroys qubits, which represent the 1s and 0s of computer information.
Quantum computers promise to be fantastically fast at solving certain
types of large problems, including the mathematics that underpins today's
Quantum random numbers could also be useful for increasing the
efficiency of quantum secret-sharing schemes, quantum encryption and various
forms of quantum communications.
Qubits can represent not only 1 and 0 but any number in between;
a string of 100 qubits can represent every possible 100-digit binary number,
and a single set of operations can search every possible answer to a problem
at once. This gives quantum computers their power, but also poses a problem
for generating random numbers. The nearly infinite number of possible
qubit configurations theoretically requires an impossibly large number
In the quantum world, no outcome is certain, and in most aspects
of quantum computing, the goal is to reduce the uncertainty in order to
get a definite answer to a problem. The researchers' scheme, however,
aims for uncertainty. It limits the possible outcomes without making them
The scheme generates quantum states in such a way that the probabilities
of the limited set of outcomes are as evenly distributed over the nearly
infinite range of possible outcomes as quantum theory allows, said Joseph
Emerson, one of the MIT researchers who is now a fellow at the Perimeter
Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada. "These pseudo-random transformations
are a practical substitute for truly... random transformations," he said.
The number of operations required to represent a truly random
configuration increases exponentially with the number of qubits in the
configuration. For example, if the quantum equivalent of generating random
numbers takes 22, or four, operations for two qubits, 15 qubits would
require 215, or 32,768, operations.
The researchers' pseudo-random number method could be used to
help build quantum computers by providing a practical way to estimate
imperfections or errors in quantum processors, said Emerson. "This is
addressing a very big problem -- imperfections such as decoherence and
inadequate control of the coherence between the qubits are the main limiting
factors in the creation of large-scale quantum computers," he said.
A quantum particle decoheres, or is knocked out of its quantum
state, when it interacts with energy from the environment in the form
of light, heat, electricity or magnetism. Researchers are looking for
ways to fend off decoherence for as long as possible in order to make
qubits last long enough to be useful.
A way to estimate decoherence would allow researchers to assess
the strength and type of environmental noise limiting the precision of
a given quantum device, said Emerson. Random quantum operations can be
used as control operations that, when subjected to the noise affecting
a prototype quantum computer, will generate a response that depends only
on the noise, he said. This way the noise can be characterized with many
fewer measurements than existing methods, which are dependent on the interactions
of the qubits and so require a number of measurements that increases exponentially
with the number of qubits, he said.
In addition to helping build quantum computers, random operators
would be useful for quantum communications tasks like encryption, said
Emerson. "The idea is to randomize a specific configuration of qubits
containing the message, and then transmit this randomized state," he said.
In this case, if each bit that makes up the message is encrypted,
or changed randomly, it is not possible for an eavesdropper to find any
type of pattern that may lead to cracking the message.
The researchers tested the method on a three-qubit prototype liquid
nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum computer. The computer consists
of a liquid sample containing the amino acid alanine, which is a molecule
made of three carbon-13 atoms. The qubits are the atoms' spins, which
are analogous to a top spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. The two
directions, spin up and spin down, can be used to represent 1 and 0. The
qubits are controlled by magnetic fields generated by the nuclear magnetic
Being able to diagnose faulty quantum computer components in a
way that is independent of the number of qubits is very important, said
Daniel Lidar, an assistant professor of theoretical chemical physics at
the University of Toronto. "For this reason alone I suspect random [operators]
will find widespread applications as quantum computer benchmarking becomes
an experimental reality," he said.
It is also likely that future quantum algorithms will make increasing
use of pseudo-random operators, said Lidar.
The researchers are working on making the random-number-generation
system more precise, said Emerson. "Right now one can only estimate very
coarse properties of the noise, such as [its] overall strength," he said.
"I would like to devise methods to get a much more detailed analysis of
the noise operators."
Complete noise-estimation experiments could be implemented in
rudimentary quantum computers within the next few years, said Emerson.
Researchers generally agree that practical quantum computers are a decade
or two away.
Emerson's research colleagues were Yaakov S. Weinstein, Marcos
Saraceno, Seth Lloyd, and David G. Corey. The work appeared in the December
19, 2003 issue of Science. The research was funded by the National
Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) and the Cambridge-MIT Institute.
Timeline: 2 years, 10-20 years
Funding: Government; University
TRN Categories: Quantum Computing and Communications; Physics
Story Type: News
Related Elements: Technical paper, "Pseudo-Random Unitary
Operators for Quantum Information Processing," Science, December 19, 2003
January 14/21, 2004
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itself on the go
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Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have harnessed the phenomenon of “quantum squeezing” to amplify and measure trillionths-of-a-meter motions of a lone trapped magnesium ion (electrically charged atom).
Described in the June 21 issue of Science, NIST’s rapid, reversible squeezing method could enhance sensing of extremely weak electric fields in surface science applications, for example, or detect absorption of very slight amounts of light in devices such as atomic clocks. The technique could also speed up operations in a quantum computer.
“By using squeezing, we can measure with greater sensitivity than could be achieved without quantum effects,” lead author Shaun Burd said.
“We demonstrate one of the highest levels of quantum squeezing ever reported and use it to amplify small mechanical motions,” NIST physicist Daniel Slichter said. “We are 7.3 times more sensitive to these motions than would be possible without the use of this technique.”
Although squeezing an orange might make a juicy mess, quantum squeezing is a very precise process, which moves measurement uncertainty from one place to another.
Imagine you are holding a long balloon, and the air inside it represents uncertainty. Quantum squeezing is like pinching the balloon on one end to push air into the other end. You move uncertainty from a place where you want more precise measurements, to another place, where you can live with less precision, while keeping the total uncertainty of the system the same.
In the case of the magnesium ion, measurements of its motion are normally limited by so-called quantum fluctuations in the ion’s position and momentum, which occur all the time, even when the ion has the lowest possible energy. Squeezing manipulates these fluctuations, for example by pushing uncertainty from the position to the momentum when improved position sensitivity is desired.
(Story continues below animation.)
In NIST’s method, a single ion is held in space 30 micrometers (millionths of a meter) above a flat sapphire chip covered with gold electrodes used to trap and control the ion. Laser and microwave pulses are applied to calm the ion’s electrons and motion to their lowest-energy states. The motion is then squeezed by wiggling the voltage on certain electrodes at twice the natural frequency of the ion’s back-and-forth motion. This process lasts only a few microseconds.
After the squeezing, a small, oscillating electric field “test signal” is applied to the ion to make it move a little bit in three-dimensional space. To be amplified, this extra motion needs to be “in sync” with the squeezing.
Finally, the squeezing step is repeated, but now with the electrode voltages exactly out of sync with the original squeezing voltages. This out-of-sync squeezing reverses the initial squeezing; however, at the same time it amplifies the small motion caused by the test signal. When this step is complete, the uncertainty in the ion motion is back to its original value, but the back-and-forth motion of the ion is larger than if the test signal had been applied without any of the squeezing steps.
To obtain the results, an oscillating magnetic field is applied to map or encode the ion’s motion onto its electronic “spin” state, which is then measured by shining a laser on the ion and observing whether it fluoresces.
Using a test signal allows the NIST researchers to measure how much amplification their technique provides. In a real sensing application, the test signal would be replaced by the actual signal to be amplified and measured.
The NIST method can amplify and quickly measure ion motions of just 50 picometers (trillionths of a meter), which is about one-tenth the size of the smallest atom (hydrogen) and about one-hundredth the size of the unsqueezed quantum fluctuations. Even smaller motions can be measured by repeating the experiment more times and averaging the results. The squeezing-based amplification technique allows motions of a given size to be sensed with 53 times fewer measurements than would otherwise be needed.
Squeezing has previously been achieved in a variety of physical systems, including ions, but the NIST result represents one of the largest squeezing-based sensing enhancements ever reported.
NIST’s new squeezing method can boost measurement sensitivity in quantum sensors and could be used to more rapidly create entanglement, which links properties of quantum particles, thus speeding up quantum simulation and quantum computing operations. The methods might also be used to generate exotic motional states. The amplification method is applicable to many other vibrating mechanical objects and other charged particles such as electrons.
This work was supported in part by the Army Research Office and the Office of Naval Research.
Paper: S.C. Burd, R. Srinivas, J.J. Bollinger, A.C. Wilson, D.J. Wineland, D. Leibfried, D.H. Slichter and D.T.C. Allcock. Quantum amplification of mechanical oscillator motion. Science. Published online June 20, 2019. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2884


Quantum Network is the combination of quantum computing and quantum cryptography system. It follows quantum key distribution algorithm. Using this algorithm, you can perform secure communication on the quantum network. It is a system used for transportation of quantum information between physically separated quantum systems. The nodes in the distributed quantum computing networks, process information using quantum logic gates. If you want to transmit quantum state in the form of photons across large distances that time free space link and optical quantum network play an important role. Many quantum networks get used as quantum key distribution between classical computing environments. This process facilitates the sharing of secret encryption keys between two parties. Find freelancers who have knowledge of quantum Network.
In April 2012 at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum in Germany, Gerhard Rempe and other researcher announced their first working quantum network to the world. In a quantum network, transmission performs through Photons alter a long link of highly sensitive atoms. In the case of fibre optics cable transmission performs through tiny glass fibre via light emissions. The quantum signal is also carried through free space connections through light emission but without glass fibre. So it is possible to transmit data through fibre optics in a quicker way. Quantum data is better than binary data as binary data is in the form of 0 and 1s where as quantum data consist of both or neither. Their physical properties add a new dimension to the computer system. Through the quantum process, you can transmit a simple piece of data.
Quantum Cryptography is the method which gives high security to information. In this method, if the values of photon changes then target party automatically becomes aware of the attack. The main aim of this process is that to provide security to information from hackers.
The central principle of quantum physics is quantum entanglement. The term in which multiple particles are linked together in a way that the quantum state of one particle gets determined by the possible quantum state of other particles. This connection isn’t depending on the particle location in space. The quantum entanglement transmits information quickly. It doesn’t mean violet classical speed of light. The process is most useful for deep space communication and cryptography. For example, in NASA Lunar Atmosphere Dust and Environment Explore demonstrated could be used to download and upload information between spacecraft and ground based receiver.
How does Current System Work?
In the current system, if you want to send information without any damage, you can use the concept of the encrypted message. To read an encrypted message the receiver need the key, so you have also to send that key. The problem that occurs with the system is that someone hacks the key and intercepts the key transmission. It easily decrypts your message, and the main problem is that your receiver also receives the key, so you don’t understand that your message becomes a hack. Hire freelancers who work on such system.
How new Quantum system works:
Through normal communication channel, China will send encrypted message from one location to other location. It will pass the quantum key for decrypting the message in the form of a set of photons in the specific quantum state to the satellite. The satellite will then pass that key to the particular message recipient. Breaking this process is more difficult for the hacker because it contains the properties of photons in quantum mechanics. If any changes occur in the quantum key, it will become unsuccessful. The attempted snooper ends with broken keys and receiver also receives that key, so that two parties know that someone is doing ford with them.
World First Unhackable Quantum Messaging:
China will launch a worlds first unhackable quantum messaging and file sharing service. The highly secure quantum communication system is in use from August in Jinan city of China. The system allows around 200 people of government, military, and finance to establish highly secure communicate all over the network. The communication through quantum will be longest and most secure in the world, and it will travel 2000 km from Beijing to Shanghai through the message hub in Jinan, and it has the capability of encrypting 4000 pieces of data per second. Find freelancers who have basic knowledge of Unhackable systems.
The network required 120 million Yuan for creation, and it has gone from 50 tests since May. For transmitting a message, the network uses quantum key distribution. The network is more secure than telephone cables and current internet.
The network starts its development since 2013 and last year china completed 2000km quantum links which connect the different city of China, Beijing-Shanghai-Jitana-Hafai-Anhui. When exchanging files, faxes, and secure telephone communication, it transfers at 99% success rate.
Why is Quantum network unhackable? Because it transfers information using light particles and also includes a high level of encryption called Quantum Entanglement. Entanglement is the key to the working of quantum computers. It is the network that would connect them and uses most sophisticated cryptography so that information gets exchanged securely.
The quantum entanglement distance record is 97 Km in 2012 across Quighai Lake of China at University of Science and technology by quantum physicist Jian-Wei Pan. In a quantum network, it sends messages embedded in particles of light. If the third party attempts to hack the system, the light particle will disrupt due to their quantum nature and stop the communication and authorities get alerted. So the meaning of the message is impossible to read and interpret. Hire freelancers who work on the quantum network.
In this article, you get information regarding what is a quantum network and how that system works. You also get information regarding how does current system work and provide security to your information. China will launch world’s first new system that is unhackable which work on the quantum network and provides high security to the system. In this article, you also get information regarding how china’s unhackable system works.


Mankind Will Soon Be Able to Travel to Other Galaxies – Spaceships Faster than Lightspeed!
In millennia past, people have progressively figured out more effective ways of getting from one place to another. Previously, long distances could only be traversed by horseback or even on foot, but today we have at our disposal a variety of modes of transportation, including cars, planes, trains, and even futuristic ships.
So, while we’ve already made progress in developing faster and more efficient forms of transportation on Earth, the question now is how manned space flight will evolve in this regard. As is well known, a space probe launched from Earth takes many months, if not years, to reach its galactic target. It’s hard to say what the future holds for this venture.
A fascinating question arises when we follow the thought experiment of breaking ever new cosmic speed records to its logical conclusion: Will there ever be light-speed ships? In today’s video, we will quickly take a closer look at this fascinating issue with you.
But before we begin, kindly subscribe to this channel, like this video, and enable the notification feature If you haven’t already. Come on, let’s get started!
Light travels quickly because it has a short path to travel. According to cosmological laws, nothing can move faster than light. In reality, it is the fastest object on the planet. There is no limit to the distance that light may travel; it travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. In the blink of an eye, light may travel from Los Angeles to New York City. Faster than any commercial airliner by more than 10,000 orders of magnitude.
Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to Earth. It’s 4.25 light-years away, or 25 trillion miles away (40 trillion km). The Parker Solar Probe, which is already in orbit, will achieve a top speed of 450,000 mph, making it the fastest spacecraft ever. At such speed, it would take just 20 seconds to travel from Los Angeles to New York City, yet the solar probe would take 6,633 years to reach Earth’s nearest neighboring solar system.
Everything in our Universe is bound by a few simple rules. The conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum is guaranteed anytime two quanta come into contact with each other. There are no differences between the physics of a forward-moving system of particles and its mirrored antiparticle counterpart when time is reversed in a mirror. Nothing can ever travel faster than the speed of light, and nothing with mass will ever be able to achieve this coveted feat.
Many people have come up with innovative ways to get around this final restriction. In theory, tachyons have been introduced as hypothetical particles that could theoretically exceed the speed of light, but tachyons must have imaginary masses and do not exist in the real world. Although a sufficiently twisted space in General Relativity could produce other, shorter paths for light, there are no known wormholes in our physical universe. While quantum entanglement can produce “suspicious” behavior at a distance, no information can be transported faster than light.
People will have to go faster than the speed of light if they ever hope to travel effortlessly between stars. However, until now, faster-than-light travel has only existed in science fiction.
In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, humans can use jump drives to travel between planets, stars, and even the entire cosmos. Interstellar astronauts and Thor heroes exploit wormholes to travel across solar systems in just a few seconds.
Warp drive technology is another option that “Star Trek” fans are familiar with. Theoretically, warp drives are conceivable, but a long way off. One of the many obstacles separating warp drive theory from reality was reported to have been surmounted in two recent studies published in March 2021.
However, how do these speculative warp drives actually operate in reality? As for the future of humankind, will they be able to travel at warp speed?
Albert Einstein’s General Relativity theory is the foundation of modern physics’ knowledge of spacetime. According to General Relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in the universe. Mass and energy can also cause spacetime to distort around massive objects, such as stars and black holes. Many space heroes are afraid of “falling into” or “getting stuck in” a gravity well because of this curvature. John Campbell and Isaac Asimov, among the first science fiction writers, regarded warping as a technique to get around the speed limit.
Wouldn’t it be cool if a spaceship could shrink the volume of space around it while simultaneously growing the volume behind it? The warp drive from “Star Trek” is based on this concept.
Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre demonstrated in 1994 that compressing spacetime in front of the spacecraft while expanding it behind was mathematically achievable under the laws of General Relativity.
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In 2016 China launched “QUESS” (Quantum Experiments at Space Scale), a new type of satellite that it hopes will be capable of “quantum communications” which is supposed to be hack-proof, through the use of “quantum entanglement”. This allows the operator to ensure that no one else is listening to your communications by reliably distributing keys that are then used for encryption in order to be absolutely sure that there is no one in the middle intercepting that information.
According the Chinese scientists involved in the project, quantum encryption is secure against any kind of computing power because information encoded in a quantum particle is destroyed as soon as it is measured. (According to Tibor Molnar a scientist at the University of Sydney), the only way to ‘observe’ a photon is to have it interact with (a) an electron, or (b) an electromagnetic field. Either of these interactions will cause the photon to “decohere” – i.e., interfere with it in a way that will be apparent to the intended recipient.
Gregoir Ribordy, co-founder of Geneva-based quantum cryptography firm ID Quantique, likened it to sending a message written on a soap bubble. “If someone tries to intercept it when it’s being transmitted, by touching it, they make it burst.”
Quantum physicists have recently advanced the use of photons to communicate securely over short distances – 50-150 km – on earth. The satellite, if successful, would vastly expand the range of unhackable communication.
To test whether quantum communications can take place at a global scale, the Chinese team will attempt to beam a quantum cryptographic key through space from Beijing to Vienna.
This topic was also discussed by a group of my international colleagues (USA, UK, Netherlands) and this is a summary of that discussion.
Two of them assisted in explaining what this is all about, one worked on the first quantum key distribution network and one of the world’s best quantum computing teams is situated close to where he works.
The two explained the differences between the various quantum technologies.
- Quantum communications – sending information encoded in single photons (or equivalent) such that one can determine eavesdropping. Most useful for key exchange though has other uses. Sometimes called quantum key distribution networks.
- Quantum cryptography – work to devise cryptographic algorithms that are not affected by the creation of quantum computers. (Generally “quantum cryptography” has tended to mean what is now called – in the context of the Chinese satellite – “quantum communications”). Post-quantum cryptography is the search for algorithms not rendered useless by quantum computation.
- Quantum computing – a computer that harnesses quantum physics such that certain types of computation can be done more efficiently. There are still some doubts as to whether this is feasible. (Less so then before, but some say that it might be like nuclear fusion, not forbidden by physical laws, but hard to implement.) And, like fusion, if it could be made practical, certain types of cryptosystems (in particular, the RSA cryptosystem, but also the elliptic curve systems that have become widespread) would have to be abandoned. RSA encryption relies on the practical difficulty of factorising very large numbers, a task which is imagined to be very much easier (or at least faster) with quantum computers. But we do have substitute classical crypto systems that could be used that, as far as we know, are hard to break.
A few other colleagues discussed the concept of “quantum entanglement”. As he explained intuitively you’d think this would work and provide a means of faster-than-light communication. However, it turns out that though the two particles are quantum entangled, you can’t actually convey any information between the two measurement points. Tibor added to this that even Quantum Key Distribution requires two-channel communication: one of “entangled photons” (which may be described as super-luminal), and another classical channel (which is definitely sub-luminal) advising which measurements of those photons are significant.
To take a example, if you measure two quantum entangled photons and find the first photon is “spin up”, the second photon will always be “spin down” and vice-versa. Some clever statistics – the so-called “Bell Inequality” and its further elaboration, the “CHSH Inequality” – tells you they weren’t in this state to start with, it’s only the act of measuring that forces the first photon into this state, then instantly the second photon will be in the opposite state. Or so it seems: there are other interpretations, e.g., Quantum Bayesianism, but the effect is the same. I won’t go into details here, it’s a fairly long and difficult to get your head around the explanation as to how we know they weren’t in a particular state to start with. The mathematics (and in this example, intuition) also tell you that no information is conveyed from one location to the other by the measurement alone.
The discussion also addressed the implications of this development. One of the experts commented: “This has zero practical significance”. Classical crypto is occasionally attacked, but the progress against the basic mathematical algorithms is seldom dramatic. Tibor added that it will become much more significant/dramatic when/if quantum computing becomes a reality, for then the most commonly used ‘classical’ cryptography techniques will no longer be secure. Practically all of the zillions of attacks that we hear about are at higher levels, implementation, protocols, … and, of course, human users (phishing, whaling). So the question could indeed be: why struggle to intercept/decrypt a message when you can just read the Post-It Note stuck on the sender’s screen?
Paul Budde (standing on the shoulders of giants)


Before the advent of quantum physics, Albert Einstein, still thinking in the classical paradigm, thought that nothing in the universe could travel faster than light. In the past two decades, however, it has been experimentally proven that one thing can indeed move faster than the speed of light: information. Information can be sent between two objects at any distance instantaneously.
This ground-breaking experiment conclusively proved the existence of “Quantum Entanglement” which is basically a fancy name for “instantaneous information travel.” First scientists took single photons and split them into separate “twin” particles with identical properties. Then they fired both particles away from each other in opposite directions through specially designed fiber-optic chambers. At the end of these long pathways, the twin particles were forced to choose between two random but exactly identical routes. Curiously, without fail, in every trial the particles made precisely the same choices and traveled the same paths. Classical physics has always assumed that separate particles have no communication with one another, but quantum physics has now proven that assumption erroneous.
The first entanglement experiments were designed and tested in 1982 by French physicist Alain Aspect at Orsay’s Institut d’Optique. These crude but conclusive studies later inspired Nicholas Gisin’s University of Geneva group of physicists to replicate them at greater distances. In 1997 Gisin built a 14 mile fiber-optic chamber and repeated Aspect’s experiment with exactly the same results. Later in 2004 Gisin extended the chamber to 25 miles and once again, as usual, no matter how far apart, the particles always chose and traveled the same random pathways.
“Quantum mechanics has shown through experimentation that particles, being after all but moving points on some infinite wave, are in communication with one another at all times. That is to say, if our quantum mechanic does something to particle A over in Cincinnati, Ohio, planet Earth, the experience of this event will be instantly communicated to particle Z, at speeds faster than light, over in Zeta Reticuli. What this suggests is that anything one given particle experiences can be experienced by another particle simultaneously, and perhaps even by all particles everywhere. The reason for this is that they are all part of the same wave, the same energy flow.” –Jake Horsley, “Matrix Warrior” (90-91)
“For a message to travel between them, it would have to be moving faster than the speed of light. But according the Einstein’s theory of relativity, nothing can travel that quickly. So is it possible that these particles are violating the laws of physics … or are they demonstrating something else to us? Could they be showing us something so foreign to the way we think about our world that we’re still trying to force the mystery of what we see into the comfortable familiarity of how we believe energy gets from one place to another? What if the signal from one photon never traveled to reach the other? Is it possible that we live in a universe where the information between photons, the prayer for our loved ones, or the desire for peace in a place halfway around the world never needs to be transported anywhere to be received? The answer is yes! This appears to be precisely the kind of universe we live in.” -Gregg Braden, “The Divine Matrix” (105-6)
Robert Nadeau, historian of science, and Menas Kafatos, a physicist from George Mason University wrote an entire book together on the results and implications of quantum entanglement and non-locality entitled, The Nonlocal Universe. In it they state, “All particles in the history of the cosmos have interacted with other particles in the manner revealed by the Aspect experiments … Also consider … that quantum entanglement grows exponentially with the number of particles involved in the original quantum state and that there is no theoretical limit on the number of these entangled particles. If this is the case, the universe on a very basic level could be a vast web of particles, which remain in contact with one another over any distance in ‘no time’ in the absence of the transfer of energy or information. This suggests, however strange or bizarre it might seem, that all of physical reality is a single quantum system that responds together to further interactions.”
Nadeau and Kafatos argue that we live in a non-local universe which is the obvious conclusion from the quantum entanglement experiments. The fact is quanta can exchange information over any distance in the universe instantaneously. These entanglement experiments prove that Eintstein was incorrect in stating that nothing travels faster than light (186,000 miles per second). Quantum information “travels” at infinite speed “arriving” at its destination without any time elapsing. Here we see how the Newtonian/Einsteinian language of a local universe fails to describe our actual reality. It’s not that information is “traveling” at infinite “speed” to “arrive” at another location, but rather that the universe with all its so-called parts and particles is actually One non-local quantum system. Information from one particle to another doesn’t need to “travel” there because the space between them is illusory, as is the language of calling them “separate” particles. As we have seen, before observation quanta are not particles with definite attributes and location; they are merely waves in the One universal quantum ocean until our conscious observation individualizes the wave into droplets of experience.
“Nonlocality shatters the very foundations of physics. Matter can no longer be considered separate. Actions do not have to have an observable cause over an observable space. Einstein’s most fundamental axiom isn’t correct: at a certain level of matter, things can travel faster than the speed of light. Subatomic particles have no meaning in isolation but can only be understood in their relationships. The world, at its most basic, exists as a complex web of interdependent relationships, forever indivisible.” -Lynne McTaggart, “The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe,” (11)
“As an aside, it’s interesting to note that Nadeau and Kafatos mention early in their book that readers accidentally encountering their book in the ‘new age’ section of a bookstore would likely be disappointed. That’s because the book is about physics and not new age ideas. But the fact that Nadeau and Kafatos felt it important to mention this at all illustrates the rising tension between the leading edge of interpretations in physics and the tail end of metaphysics. Physicists interested in quantum ontology are painfully aware that some interpretations of quantum reality are uncomfortably close to mystical concepts. In the eyes of mainstream science, to express sympathy for mysticism destroys one’s credibility as a scientist. Thus the taboo persists.” -Dean Radin, “Entangled Minds” (262)


Alternate format: ITSAP.40.016 Using encryption to keep your sensitive data secure (PDF, 391 KB)
Encryption technologies are used to secure many applications and websites that you use daily. For example, online banking or shopping, email applications, and secure instant messaging use encryption. Encryption technologies secure information while it is in transit (e.g. connecting to a website) and while it is at rest (e.g. stored in encrypted databases). Many up-to-date operating systems, mobile devices, and cloud services offer built-in encryption, but what is encryption? How is it used? And what should you and your organization consider when using it?
What is encryption?
Encryption encodes (or scrambles) information. Encryption protects the confidentiality of information by preventing unauthorized individuals from accessing it.
For example, Alice wants to send Bob a message, and she wants to ensure only he can read it. To keep the information confidential and private, she encrypts the message using a secret key. Once encrypted, this message can only be read by someone who has the secret key to decode it. In this case, Bob has the secret key.
Eve is intentionally trying to intercept the message and read it. However, the message is encrypted, and even if Eve gets a copy of it, she can’t read it without acquiring the secret key.
If an individual accidentally receives a message that includes encrypted information, they will be unable to read the encrypted contents without the key to decrypt the message.
How is encryption used?
Encryption is an important part of cyber security. It is used in a variety of ways to keep data confidential and private, such as in HTTPS websites, secure messaging applications, email services, and virtual private networks. Encryption is used to protect information while it is actively moving from one location to another (i.e. in transit) from sender to receiver. For example, when you connect to your bank’s website using a laptop or a smartphone, the data that is transmitted between your device and the bank’s website is encrypted. Encryption is also used to protect information while it is at rest. For example, when information is stored in an encrypted database, it is stored in an unreadable format. Even if someone gains access to that database, there’s an additional layer of security for the stored information. Encryption is also used to protect personal information that you share with organizations. For example, when you share your personal information (e.g. birthdate, banking or credit card information) with an online retailer, you should make sure they are protecting your information with encryption by using secure browsing.
Many cloud service providers offer encryption to protect your data while you are using cloud based services. These services offer the ability to keep data encrypted when uploading or downloading files, as well as storing the encrypted data to keep it protected while at rest.
When properly implemented, encryption is a mechanism that you and your organization can use to keep data private. Encryption is seamlessly integrated into many applications to provide a secure user experience.
How can I use encryption?
Your organization likely already uses encryption for many applications, such as secure browsing and encrypted messaging applications.
If you access a website with padlock icon and HTTPS in front of the web address, the communication (i.e. the data exchanged between your device and the website’s servers) with the website is encrypted.
To protect your organization’s information and systems, we recommend that you use HTTPS wherever possible. To ensure that users are accessing only HTTPS-supported websites, your organization should implement the web security policy tool HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). HSTS offers additional security by forcing users’ browsers to load HTTPS supported websites and ignore unsecured websites (e.g. HTTP).
Encrypted messaging applications
Most instant messaging applications offer a level of encryption to protect the confidentiality of your information. In some cases, messages are encrypted between your device and the cloud storage used by the messaging service provider. In other cases, the messages are encrypted from your device to the recipient’s device (i.e. end-to-end encryption). When using end-to-end encryption services, not even the messaging service provider can read your encrypted messages.
In deciding which tools to use, you need to consider both the functionality of the service and the security and privacy requirements of your information and activities. For further information, refer to protect how you connect.
Encryption is just one of many security controls necessary to protect the confidentiality of data.
What else should I consider?
Encryption is integrated into many products that are commonly used by individuals and organizations to run daily operations. When choosing a product that uses encryption, we recommend that you choose a product that is certified through the Common Criteria (CC) and the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). The CC and the CMVP list cryptographic modules that conform to Federal Information Processing Standards. Although the CC and the CMVP are used to vet products for federal government use, we recommend that everyone uses these certified products.
The CCCS recommends
The cccs recommends
- Evaluate the sensitivity of your information (e.g. personal and proprietary data) to determine where it may be at risk and implement encryption accordingly.
- Choose a vendor that uses standardized encryption algorithms (e.g. CC and CMVP supported modules).
- Review your IT lifecycle management plan and budget to include software and hardware updates for your encryption products.
- Update and patch your systems frequently.
Prepare and plan for the quantum threat to cyber security. For more information, please see ITSE.00.017 Addressing the Quantum Computing Threat to Cryptography.
Encryption for highly sensitive data
Systems that contain highly sensitive information (e.g. financial, medical, and government institutions) require additional security considerations. Contact us for further guidance on cryptographic solutions for high-sensitivity systems and information: firstname.lastname@example.org.


Nowadays, you might have heard about quantum computers many times and that they are the future of modern computing. But what is a quantum computer? Why don’t we already have them in our homes?
So that’s why in this article, we will explain what these systems consist of, how they work, and when we can expect a more widespread implementation.
First of all, you should bear in mind that the idea that quantum computers will end up replacing PCs is wrong. Using a ‘normal’ home PC is still the easiest and cheapest solution for most everyday problems and user needs, and will continue to be for a long, long time.
However, quantum computers promise to drive technological advancements in many fields — from materials science to pharmaceutical research, which is why many companies are investing in developing this technology.
What is a quantum computer, and how does it really work?
Quantum computers take advantage of some of the almost ‘mystical’ phenomena of quantum mechanics to offer great advances in processing power — the idea is that a very simple quantum computer would be more powerful than the supercomputers that exist today.
The secret of this type of equipment lies in its ability to generate and manipulate quantum bits, known as qubits.
What are qubits, and how do they work?
Today’s computers work with bits, which are nothing more than a stream of electrical (or optical) pulses that represent ones and zeros in the binary system. Everything from the emails you use to YouTube videos to this very article you’re reading is essentially long strings of binary digits.
Quantum computers, in contrast, use qubits instead, which are subatomic particles like electrons or photons. Generating and managing qubits represents quite an engineering challenge, and companies like IBM or Google use superconducting circuits cooled to almost absolute zero for this, while other companies like IonQ manage them by trapping individual atoms in electromagnetic fields using silicon chips in chambers. In both cases, the main goal is to separate the qubits and keep them in a controlled quantum state.
The most curious thing about these Qubits is that they can have both processing states at the same time or neither, which makes them tremendously difficult to predict, and everything will be based on approximations towards one state or another.
Qubits have some peculiar quantum properties, and among them, the one that interests us the most is that when they form groups, they provide exponentially greater processing power than when bits are used in binary systems. These properties are called overlap and entanglement.
The most remarkable peculiarity of qubits is that, unlike bits that can only be ones and zeroes, they are capable of having three states — one, zero, and one and zero simultaneously. This ability to represent several states at the same time is what is called superposition. And for the qubits to reach this state, it is necessary to manipulate them with precision lasers or microwave rays.
Thanks to this phenomenon — which seems impossible, right? But that’s how quantum mechanics works.
A quantum computer with several overlapping qubits can process a huge amount of calculation results simultaneously. The final result of a calculation is generated only after the qubits are measured, which can immediately cause their state to ‘collapse’ to a one or a zero.
Engineers can generate pairs of qubits that are ‘entangled’ with each other, meaning that both pair members exist in a single quantum state. Changing the state to one of these qubits will immediately change the state of the other. And this will happen even if they are separated by long distances.
No one knows very well how exactly this ‘mess’ works, and even the well-known Einstein defined it as a “creepy action at a distance“, but the fact is that it is key to the computing power of quantum computers.
In a conventional computer, doubling the number of bits would double its processing power, while in a quantum machine, there is an exponential increase in its capacity.
Thus, quantum computers take advantage of these qubits entangled in a kind of chain to work their magic. The ability of these machines to speed up calculations using specially designed quantum algorithms is the reason why there is so much expectation about their potential.
That is good news. The bad news is that quantum computers are far more prone to miscalculation than normal computers due to another phenomenon — decoherence.
The interaction of qubits with their environment sometimes causes their quantum behavior to decay and eventually disappear, called quantum decoherence.
Their quantum state is extremely fragile, and the slightest vibration or temperature change — known by the term ‘noise’ — can cause qubits to ‘fall’ out of their superposition state before they have finished performing their job. For this reason, it is imperative that a quantum computer is totally isolated from the environment — humidity, temperature changes, vibrations, etc. — and therefore, it is necessary to put them in large refrigerators and vacuum chambers. However, these chambers and coolers are not perfect, and in the end, the noise causes errors in the calculations.
Smart quantum algorithms compensate for some of these errors and adding extra qubits to each calculation also helps. Still, as they calculate, it takes thousands of standard qubits to create a single 100% reliable qubit, known as a ‘Logical Qubit.’ This, on the other hand, would greatly reduce the total computing power.
And there lies the problem — until now, researchers have not been able to create environments of more than 128 standard qubits, so until now, it has been impossible to build a single logical qubit. As they calculate, we are decades away from being able to achieve it.
What is the use of a quantum computer?
One of the most promising applications of these systems is to simulate the behavior of matter at the molecular level. Automakers such as Volkswagen or Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) already use quantum computers to simulate electric car batteries’ chemical composition to find ways to improve their performance.
Pharmaceutical companies use them to analyze and compare compounds that could lead to the creation of new medications.
The machines are also excellent for solving optimization problems since, with their computing power, they can analyze a large number of possible solutions for any problem. For example, the Airbus company uses them to calculate more efficient ascent and descent routes for its planes. Volkswagen has already introduced a service that calculates the most optimal routes for buses and taxis in cities to avoid traffic jams.
In any case, there are still many years — surely decades — until quantum computers can be fully viable, and indeed even longer until their use is standardized.
There are some things like a quantum computer could not do certain current tasks that a common PC would solve without a problem. Another issue is software since a totally different series of programming is required, and the ENTIRE sector would have to migrate, something that cannot be done in a few years.
Beyond certain environments, the reality is that the quantum computer is far from reaching us — ordinary users.


The Classification of Matter (COM) programme is one of the main avenues of research into the physical world.
It aims to identify the various properties of matter, from atomic particles to atoms, and then to infer their properties using experiments.
This is known as general relativity, which was developed in the 1950s by the American physicist Richard Feynman.
The main aim of the programme is to develop a general theory of gravity.
The aim is to explain the properties of the world around us using a simple physical theory.
It was originally developed to explain how matter and antimatter behave.
In general relativity theory, matter and antiparticles interact and interact with each other, creating gravitational waves, and this interaction creates the effects we see in the cosmos.
In some cases, the interactions are so powerful that gravity is observed.
There are several ways of looking at this.
One way is to say that matter and anti-matter interact in a way that is fundamentally different from the way we normally experience the world.
The second way is that these interactions are completely different from what we experience, but that they nevertheless give rise to a property called the special theory of relativity (STT), which gives us the properties we observe in the universe.
But there are also a few other ways to look at it, such as the classical special theory, which describes the properties and interactions of matter and space-time, and the quantum special theory (QFT), which describes quantum interactions between particles.
The three are called the Classical, Quantum and Special.
In terms of the Standard Model of particle physics, the Standard model is a description of the fundamental physics of the universe, which is the universe that we see.
There is one difference between the Standard and the Standard models.
The Standard Model assumes that all matter and energy in the observable universe exist in a single state.
The Quantum Model assumes there are different states of matter or energy.
The QFT assumes there is only one possible state of matter at any time, and it is this state that we observe.
The classical models assume a universe where matter and matter’s interaction with each another is a constant, but there is no fixed state of mass or energy, and therefore there are a variety of possible states of mass and energy.
If we are to understand the physical laws of the Universe, we must consider all possible states, but this requires us to look in all possible universes.
We can only look at the Standard Models in the Standard Universe because the Standard Standard is so stable.
But it is also possible to think of the Quantum Model as being more stable.
Quantum mechanics is the study of the nature of particles.
It describes the behavior of a particle as it interacts with a field, such that the particle is always moving in a direction which is different from that of the field.
For example, a particle in the quantum world is always changing direction, and if the particle’s position is changed, the direction the particle will change is also changed.
The two are the same.
In the quantum theory, the two are not necessarily the same thing, but the particles behave in the same way as if they were.
If you have a particle that is moving in the direction of a magnetic field, it is in the Quantum world, but if the magnetic field changes direction, the particle goes into the Standard world.
There might be other possible states that we cannot account for, but we cannot see the particles as particles, because they are moving in opposite directions.
The quantum world cannot be considered the Standard World because the two different states are not the same, and they do not interact with one another.
The following table gives some examples of what is possible in the standard universe: We are looking for a point P in space P and a point Q in time Q, where P is a particle, and Q is a point in time.
Let us suppose we are in the position P at time t and let’s call the point P a particle.
We would expect the particle to be in the field P if and only if it moves in a straight line.
If it is a wave, then we would expect it to be moving in an opposite direction from the direction P. The question is, how does the particle interact with the field?
How do the particles interact?
The particle has a state that is known to be called a quantum field.
A quantum field is one in which a particle is neither moving nor changing, but is simply a part of a system of quantum bits.
The way that the particles in a quantum world interact is to be found in a special theory called quantum entanglement.
The particles interact with their fields in a certain way, by changing the state of the particles.
In a quantum entangled system, this is a property that is not always obvious.
For instance, if the particles have the same quantum field, but in a different state, the quantum particles might be able to get along with each others states.
But if the quantum particle’s state is