Quantum Computer in a Nutshell (Documentary)

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the ability to contemplate the meaning of the world around us brings out a constant desire to deepen our knowledge and broaden our horizons this curiosity is fundamental to the development of our species and civilization from the advent of the wheel to the innovation of engines from the cultivation of herbs to the development of modern medicine from the abacus to computers human history is a record of progress our drive to explore has opened the door to new possibilities to improve our quality of life and allow our species to thrive throughout the centuries of scientific development human beings have been driven by the conviction to uncover the mysteries of the universe but with each new discovery we were confronted with new questions and challenges today we live in an age in which the possibility of crossing a new threshold of scientific knowledge is within arm's reach this is the dream of quantum computer is a ssin you in 1980 russian german mathematician uri mining was the first to propose the idea of quantum computing a year later eminent physicist Richard Feynman presented a logical quantum computer model at the conference on physics and computerization the premise behind fineman's model rested in the conviction that it would be impossible to conduct the simulation of a quantum system with the use of a classic computer Fineman understood that the traditional engineering approach to the problem of computer development would never lead to a revolution he based his reasoning on the laws of nature fineman's lectures from the last years of his scientific activities are considered by many to be a key moment in the development of quantum computer theory classic computers are devices that with the use of transistors process information in the form of sequences of various combinations of zeros and ones known as computer binary language in simple terms a transistor is a type of switch it can be turned on which corresponds to binary one or it can be turned off which corresponds to binary zero the grouping of transistors in two special circuits which are called logic gates allows the computer to perform calculations and make decisions in accordance with a man-made computer program the computers processing power depends on the number of transistors used according to Moore's Law today this power is doubling every two years as of 2014 the commercially available processor processing the highest number of transistors is the 15 core Zion Ivy bridge-e X with over 4.3 billion transistors in the case of graphic processors the world's record belongs to Nvidia which offers computer accelerators in which the number of transistors exceeds seven billion although this type of device is admirable and undoubtedly contributes to the development of science and technology it does not change the fact that there are still some problems of higher rank which could not be resolved in optimal time even by the most advanced classic computers no conventional solutions or improvements can compare with the endless possibilities offered by the laws of quantum mechanics the quantum mechanical states of elementary particles like transistor voltages can be described in zeros and ones depending on the method used we can apply various kinds of particles to the calculations here the state described by the zeros and the ones is the internal angular momentum of the particle known as its spin although it's not possible to describe this particular feature through the use of classical mechanics it can be likened to a magnetic bar capable of deviations when the bar is pointed up the state can be described by a value of 1 however when it is pointing down it can be described by the value of 0 in other words spin up corresponds to the turned on switch and spin down corresponds to the turned off switch using this analogy we can describe the defined quantum states with the use of binary system much like the classic computer however beyond this point all similarity ends the advantage of quantum computing mainly rests in the quantum mechanical feature thanks which an elementary particle can be in multiple states simultaneously this type of phenomenon called superposition occurs before the measurement that defines the particles permanent state before the measurement when there's no surrounding noise the elementary particle experiences superposition manifesting its quantum ability to occupy multiple particle States at the same time thus in accordance with the principles of quantum physics a spin of exemplary particle may in a parallel manner indicate all directions at the same time forcing us to describe it with 0 and 1 simultaneously thus unlike the classic computer where the basic unit of information is one bit expressed by just one number in binary notation in the case of quantum computing information is expressed through a quantum bit ie so-called qubit which is described by both 0 and 1 binary units simultaneously working with qubits provides us with incredible new possibilities for the effective processing of databases beyond what we could have ever before imagined to better illustrate the significant advantage of working with qubits let's consider the example of all possible combinations of the two-bit data system we have four possible states 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 a two-bit classic computer can at the most simultaneously perform one of these 4 possible functions in order to check all of them the computer would have to repeat each operation separately a two qubit quantum computer due to the phenomenon of superposition is able to analyze all of these possibilities at the same time in one operation this is due to the fact that two qubits contain information about four states while two bits only contain information about one state thus a machine with n qubits can be in superposition of the two n states at the same time a for qubit computer could analyze sixteen parallel states in a single operation in comparison a 4-bit classic computer can only analyze one state to achieve the same solution as the quantum computer the classic computer would have to repeat this operation 16 times the advantages of quantum computing will continue to increase with the increase in data it is thus possible that a 500 cubic computer could one day analyze more data than there are atoms in the observable universe early prototypes of quantum computers were comprised of test-tubes scientists Neil Gershenfeld Isaac Wong and Mark Cuban Utz made use of the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance to create the first quantum computer model the model was comprised of a test tube which contained chloroform particles the apparatus was placed in a constant magnetic field that helped the scientists to focus on the interactions between the spins of hydrogen and carbon which acted as a logic gate the programming was conducted with the use of radio impulses of particular frequencies which resulted in the variation of spins the test tube computer model successfully found the element in the four element data set although these early experiments were successful researchers from university of new mexico claim that these early computer models were nothing more than classic simulations of quantum computing the possibility of actually developing such a system for practical applications is not readily conceivable to develop a fully efficient quantum computer certain requirements must be fulfilled one of the most important is to create appropriate conditions under which it would be possible to manipulate qubits while allowing them to maintain their unique properties it is a very difficult task that requires great precision and special equipment but doing so would give away to a plenitude of possibilities offered by the fundamental laws of nature however in a macro world such as ours there are many obstacles to the development of quantum systems one of the biggest problems faced by scientists working to develop quantum computers is the issue of decoherence each elementary particle is subject to wave particle duality meaning that sometimes it behaves like a particle and other times it behaves like a wave the particle behaving like a wave is subject to a phenomenon known as unitary evolution which is described by Schrodinger's equation it's a state in which noise from the surroundings ie decoherence related to among others thermal energy is not sufficiently large enough to trigger the leakage of very susceptible quantum information such evolution of entanglement and mutual decoherence may be analyzed and controlled in time which allows for the processing of information in a completely new way additionally it is essential that the qubits remain in the state of quantum entanglement only with each other forming a coherent system in which the exchange of quantum information may occur between them unfortunately our surroundings are comprised of elementary particles which only serve to disrupt the precision of quantum processing such uncontrolled entanglements of qubits with the surroundings outside the system could lead to a leakage of important information consequently it's essential to isolate and cool the quantum computer processor where the calculations take place the cooling of the processor to extremely low temperatures near absolute zero helps to calm the qubits by propelling them into a state of extremely low energy levels and as a result makes them easier to control cooling is also important due to the fact that some of the superconducting materials used in the construction of quantum processors and their unique properties can only be used at very low temperatures aside from nuclear magnetic resonance other solutions and phenomena may be used to create a quantum computer such as polarization of light bose-einstein condensate quantum dots ion traps or fullerenes regardless of the method used the goal is to achieve the capability to control quantum states in such a way that it would be possible to program the computer perform the calculations and finally read the desired result in 2012 scientists from the University of New South Wales created the first single atom transistor made of silicon in light of the many positive and interesting results of the research on the control of quantum states the team of Australian researchers led by Michele Simmons has garnered worldwide recognition look at it people want to get computers that work faster and faster they want to spend less time surfing the internet they want to solve problems that they just can't do they want more graphics so whatever's happening internationally in the world of silicon chips they are getting smaller every year and that's actually driven by the market the market wants things smaller they want things faster and it's been threatening predicted many years ago you could make a computer that worked in the quantum regime you would be able to solve problems you just can't do with classical computers first of all you've got to create the single atom device and the technology to do that just wasn't didn't exist ten years ago how do you put a single atom in silicon how do you encapsulate it so it's in their crystalline environment so it's still within the semiconductor host material and then how do you actually put wires down to connect to that single atom so that you can control that single atom to manipulate atoms you have to be inside a microscope such as the one behind me and that works in an ultra-high vacuum environment it's a big piece of stainless steel with no no air anything inside it's a vacuum and in that vacuum environment you can manipulate the atoms and that literally uses a very fine metal tip and that metal tip you actually move it across the surface of a crystal so you see the atoms on the surface and you literally move that metal tip across and as it goes over the atom it deflects what you're doing is you're measuring a current and keeping it constant and as it deflects you're measuring that small changing current as it goes up in height and so with such a technique you've been able to image the atoms on the surface and then by applying pulsed voltages to the tip at certain points you can actually change the chemistry of the surface and typically what we do on the silicon surface is we take a silicon surface nice and clean and we put down one layer of hydrogen atoms so it just literally has a silicon hydrogen bond and then with the STM technique we can apply a voltage to the tip just above that so that when hydrogen bond I literally release one hydrogen atom from the surface leaving a dangling bond and that's very reactive and to that reactive dangling bond we bring in phosphine gas which will only add stick to that dangling bond and nowhere else on the surface and it's in such a way that we can bring that phosphorous and put it exactly in one atomic blast spacing of where we want it and then once we've done that we encapsulate the silicon over-the-top ago and by encapsulating with silicon waste surround it with silicon atoms so it's sitting one phosphorus atom silicon all the way around it it's a nice clean environment for that phosphorus atom so here this is our scanning tunneling microscope on the on the right-hand side here and this is connected under ultra-high vacuum with a piece of stainless steel to a metal molecular beam epitaxy system I guess it's some very few people ever well actually several groups are trying to connect these two technologies before and they found that um the vibrations from the crystal growth site actually destroyed the imaging that you'll get with the SEM so it's actually very difficult to bring those two technologies together so we actually actually had to work with lots of engineers with both of the companies and independent acoustic engineers to bring the two technologies together it's a very expensive system it cost about three million dollars it was a one of those turning points certainly in my career because if they didn't come together and work that probably would have been the end of me we built the whole crystal structure inside the vacuum one one one atomic layer by a time and then at the end we'd take it out and then we have to find it and that was one of the first challenges we had was how do we find that single phosphorous atom and what we've done is over the last five to ten years is we've developed techniques and patented them we're making markers in the surface that are visible all the way through when you put it in vacuum and when you take it out and making sure that phosphorous atom is registered with respect to that marker but how do you connect to the outside walls there's the connections you've got to make it got to be as small as you can make them so that when you literally try and address that and you're just addressing lanta we're not all the atoms around it so when you take it out you can see the marker you put down your metal electrons on the surface that control the spin States and the electron states of the phosphorous ours and then you apply voltages to those on the surface the recording of information starts with the introduction of atoms into the lowest energy state through cooling of the device phosphorous atoms have electrons which also have a spin let's imagine the electron as a pendulum when it is in its lowest position it has the lowest amount of energy but when we start to push it lightly it gains energy such pushes can be performed with the use of microwave radiation which propels the electron into an increasingly higher energy state when the pendulum reaches its culminating point the electron may detach itself from the atom the single electron transistor is a very sensitive measure of the flow of electric charge thanks to which we can examine the flow of a single electron this type of electron detachment from the atom is equivalent to a particular direction of spin corresponding to the number one in binary notation in other words our capacity to measure the flow of a charge enables us to learn which spin had a single electron so what we see is first a spin up electron tunneling in and then after a spin down the electron tunneling back out again to me as a physicist is actually the most amazing thing that I've done in my scientific career to be able to to observe something that I would never be able to see with the bare eye and so we get visible with these extremely sensitive measurements to look at one single electron spin instead of things that you can touch with your bare hands if the Australian team is successful in increasing the number of qubits such that all of them are appropriately isolated from the environment while in a state of quantum entanglement then it will open up a new door in the world of quantum computing in addition to the universal model based on logic gates which the Australian scientists have worked on there are many others one such model is the adiabatic quantum computer the adiabatic computer was built by the company d-wave which was the first in the world to put such advanced equipment on the commercial market this company founded by Vern Braun L and Geordie Rose began in the physics and astronomy department of the University of British Columbia in Canada but it later became an independent entity the idea of building a quantum computer system was born out of the scientists experiments with superconducting materials the basic elements of D waves computer processors are called squids superconducting quantum interference devices which are some of the most sensitive devices used to measure the intensity of magnetic field in simple words squid is a certain kind of superconducting ring divided by what is known as the joseph's injunction the superconducting materials that make up these devices have certain unique properties thanks to which at very low temperatures nearing absolute zero quantum uniqueness takes precedence over the classic principles of physics that we are accustomed to for example in the cooled superconductor or squid the phenomenon of electrical resistance does not occur at all and due to a phenomenon known as the Meissner effect some objects can even levitate unlike the single atom transistor here the form of qubit is the direction of movement of many UNITED electrons which as a result of the low temperature and superconducting properties may be considered equivalent to what in the previous model was the direction of the spin in other words here zeros and ones describe the direction of flow of electrical current through the superconducting rings the clockwise flowing current corresponds to 0 while the counterclockwise flowing current corresponds to 1 the entire computerization process in type of model is based on the probabilistic method of what's known as quantum annealing quantum annealing consists of finding the optimal values among all possible solutions the name of this method is derived from annealing in metallurgy which is a technique of controlling the temperature of the cooled metal alloy slow cooling allows for the formation of ordered crystalline structures in quantum annealing the magnetic field is the equivalent of temperature for instance to find the lowest Valley during a hike in mountainous terrain we would have to track across the terrain to finally arrive at the right place quantum mechanics reduces this search quantum tunneling is a unique phenomenon which allows the particles of the micro world to cross the walls contrary to the law of conservation of energy thanks to quantum tunneling the electron searching for the lowest point in the given terrain would not have to cross it up and down because it would have the ability to penetrate through those intuitive mountains allowing for much more efficient searches if the controlled variations in the magnetic field during this walk of electrons are sufficiently slow then once the magnetic field is turned off we should be able to arrive at the correct solution which in this analogy would be the lowest point of the area d waves first client was an American armaments company called Lockheed Martin which at the end of 2010 decided to purchase a 128 cubit D wave one computer for 10 million dollars in 2013 with the cooperation of Google NASA and Ursa d-wave created a 512 cubit D wave 2 computer for an artificial intelligence laboratory researchers in this laboratory are using the d-wave 2 computer to facilitate them in their work on and in areas such as the improvement of voice activation device technology development of new drugs climate to change modelling optimization of traffic control development of robotics and machine navigation and shape recognition however within the scientific community there is a continuous and lively debate over the question of whether the computers manufactured by this Canadian company can actually be considered as fully quantum one of the basic allegations posed by the critics is the possible absence of quantum entanglement occurring between the qubits comprising the d-wave processors however according to most recent published scientific studies the computer definition used by d-wave is correct only time will tell whether this information is definitive in order to take advantage of all that is offered by the fundamental laws of nature we need software and algorithms which are just as necessary as basic construction elements creating the algorithms however is a very difficult task as it requires that we take into account the counterintuitive laws of quantum mechanics nevertheless there are many people who have risen to the challenge Peter shor and LOV Grover are the creators of some of the most well known quantum algorithms most notably since its creation Shor's algorithm has generated a great deal of discussion among the scientific community as it could be used to break the modern encryption keys such as RSA if there were a quantum computer capable of efficiently using Shor's algorithm the use of encryption to secure bank accounts and other operations and the accompanying difficulty of mass numerical division would cease to exist classic computers don't handle these type of difficulties very well so we can sleep peacefully without worrying that our bank account will be cleaned out by a quantum hacker another significant algorithm is Grover's algorithm which was devised to sort through information in unordered databases imagine searching through a phonebook with a random assortment of names in order to find a given telephone number you would have to search through each and every listing which would undoubtedly be cumbersome and time-consuming however by applying Grover's algorithm to a quantum computer you could retrieve the desired name in only a few seconds it should be noted however that a single outcome obtained from such calculations is only a probable solution the more times the computer performs the calculations the more likely it is to find the proper solution to the problem quantum computers are devices mainly designed to solve complex problems which require us to deal with very large amounts of data these types of machines will soon find their practical application in research laboratories instead of computer games the role of a quantum computer is to provide assistance in capturing what is beyond the boundary imposed by time and energy needs perhaps in the not so distant future we will be able to climb up the ladder to a new rung of possibilities such as the creation of new drugs breakthroughs in research on climate change and the development of new technological devices it is the hope that these new discoveries will provide us with a deeper understanding of the structure of the reality that surrounds us and all of this thanks to the laws of nature and the desire to explore which defines humanity you

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