2023-08-21 13:00:43
50 years ago Japanese theorists predicted a quantum state. Since then, however, this phenomenon had never been detected in practice. Now, researchers from the Department of Physics at the University of Hamburg have finally observed this state!
Ordinarily, electrons repel each other because of their negative charge. This phenomenon plays a major role and influences many material properties. One of them is electrical resistance.
However, everything changes if the electrons are “stuck” together in the form of pairs and become bosons. Unlike electrons which repel each other, bosonic pairs can coexist in the same space and perform identical movements.
One of the most intriguing properties of materials containing these electron pairs is superconductivity: the ability to allow electric current to pass through without any resistance.
Over the years, superconductivity has been exploited for many technological applications such as MRIs or magnetic field detectors.
And with the miniaturization of electrical devices, there is a growing interest in understanding how superconductivity can be achieved in smaller structures of a nanoscale…
Pairs of electrons created in an artificial atom
A major breakthrough has just been made by researchers from the Department of Physics and the Cluster of Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter” at the University of Hamburg.
These scientists led by Dr. Jens Wiebe paired electrons in an artificial atom called a “quantum dot”: the smallest building block of nanostructured electronic devices.
To achieve this, they locked the electrons in tiny cages built from silver, atom by atom. By coupling them to an elementary superconductor, these electrons have inherited its tendency to pair. This made it possible to create a basic version of superconductivity.
A quantum state predicted in the early 1970s finally observed
The experimental signature obtained, a spectroscopic peak at very low energy, corresponds to the quantum state predicted in the early 1970s by the Japanese Kazushige Machida and Fumiaki Shibata!
The main author of the study, Dr. Lucas Schneider, has also received an email from Machida to thank him for having finally proven his discovery thanks to his ingenious method.
He explains in particular that he “long thought that non-magnetic transition metal impurities produce the in-gap state, but its location is so close to the edge of superconducting space that it was impossible to prove its existence”.
A big step forward for quantum computing
This state had always escaped detection in previous experiments, but recent research by Danish and Dutch teams has proven it to be useful in removing unwanted noise from transmon qubits: an essential part of modern quantum computers.
This work might therefore have important consequences in the understanding of superconductivity within nanoscopic structures, and its potential application in modern quantum computers…
For more information, you can consult the study published in the journal Nature ! Do not hesitate to discover our complete file on quantum computing by following this link!
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