Combining two approaches to advance quantum computing

Quantum computer systems maintain the potential to out-perform all standard computing programs. Two promising bodily implementations for the storage and manipulation of quantum data are the electromagnetic modes of superconducting circuits and the spins of small numbers of electrons trapped in semiconductor quantum dots.

A crew of researchers led by the lab of Michel Devoret, the Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics, experimentally demonstrated a brand new quantum bit (“qubit”) that fuses these two platforms, with the potential to tackle the useful features of each. The outcomes are printed in the present day in Science.

The qubit consists of the spin of a person superconducting quasiparticle trapped in a Josephson junction. Due to a spin-orbit coupling within the junction, the supercurrent flowing by the junction relies on the quasiparticle spin state.

“We were able to show how to harness this spin-dependent supercurrent to achieve both spin detection and coherent spin manipulation,” mentioned Max Hays, a Ph.D. scholar in Devoret’s lab, and lead writer of the research.

This work additionally represents a big development to our understanding and management of Andreev ranges. Andreev ranges are microscopic, digital states that exist in all Josephson junctions; they’re the microscopic origin of the well-known Josephson impact, by which a present flows with none voltage. In superconductor-semiconductor heterostructures such because the nanowire junctions investigated on this experiment, Andreev ranges are the mum or dad states of Majorana modes (particular states by which the 2 “halves” of an electron are pulled aside). Therefore, this experiment can be necessary for efforts to carry out Majorana-based topological data processing.