July 28, 2011 08:31 pm EDT

Ultra-pure material lets electrons discover each other on the quantum dance floor

These guys aren't Purdue University professors, they're DJs. That thing on the left? It isn't a high-mobility gallium-arsenide molecular beam epitaxy system, it's their decks. It creates an ultra-pure material so perfectly latticed that it traps electrons between its layers and stops them bouncing around like drunken fools at the high school prom. By squeezing them ever so tightly, it lulls the particles into an "exotic" slow dance, at which point they become "aware" of each other and start performing correlated motions that are essential for quantum computing. That's a still a long way off, but if one day we find ourselves affixing gallium arsenide swabs to our quantum motherboards, we'll raise our lighters in the air. Informative PR after the break.

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Ultra-pure material lets electrons discover each other on the quantum dance floor originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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