November 27, 2012Phys.org
Researchers show that relatively simple physical systems could yield powerful quantum computers
By: Larry Hardesty
The following is an excerpt. To read the full story visit the Phys.org website.
Quantum computers are devices – still largely theoretical – that could perform certain types of computations much faster than classical computers; one way they might do that is by exploiting "spin," a property of tiny particles of matter. A "spin chain," in turn, is a standard model that physicists use to describe systems of quantum particles, including some that could be the basis for quantum computers... "It's been known that if the particles can have constant but rather high dimension"— that is, number of possible spin states — "the entanglement can be pretty high," says Sandy Irani, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Irvine who specializes in quantum computation.
Researchers show that relatively simple physical systems could yield powerful quantum computers