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Science

Researchers Race to Put the Quantum Into Mechanics

Adrian Y. Cho

Published Jan 2, 2003• 63 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Machines that make the slightest possible motion could lead to wild new technologies and help reveal why the weird rules of the microscopic realm don9t apply to our everyday world. At least four groups hope to reach the quantum limit of motion within months. The feat could open the way for tiny, fingerlike force detectors with the highest possible sensitivity. Such detectors might enable researchers to quickly decode DNA and other large molecules, and someday they might serve as the guts of superfast quantum computers.

DOI
10.1126/science.299.5603.36

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Machines that make the slightest possible motion could lead to wild new technologies and help reveal why the weird rules of the microscopic realm don9t apply to our everyday world. At least four groups hope to reach the quantum limit of motion within months. The feat could open the way for tiny, fingerlike force detectors with the highest possible sensitivity. Such detectors might enable researchers to quickly decode DNA and other large molecules, and someday they might serve as the guts of superfast quantum computers.
We are on the verge of a new era in computation, one that operates on the strange and wonderful rules of the quantum world. This article explores the story of quantum computing, a technology that promises to solve problems far beyond the reach of today's fastest supercomputers. We'll journey from the core ideas that make it all possible—concepts like superposition and entanglement—to the incredible machines being built in labs around the world. We'll see how these machines are being programmed and witness the first hints of their power in fields like medicine, materials science, and cybersecurity. Finally, we'll take an honest look at the immense challenges that still lie ahead on the path to building a truly powerful quantum computer. This is a story of human ingenuity pushing the boundaries of science, a tale of the immense potential and practical hurdles of the coming quantum age.
For particular classes of problems that we can state as generalizations of finding the period of a discrete function or locating an item on a discrete list, quantum computing promises a dramatic speedup over classical machines. Quantum computing has had a stimulating effect on the theory of computing, generated some excellent thinking about the foundations of quantum mechanics, and justified some elegant experimental work in applied physics. But, as was probably inevitable, it also has generated some myths. I think the myths actually affect public perception of what's possible in computing technology and, by implication, can lead to wild overestimates of what to expect from computational science.
A quantum computer, tapping into the quantum weirdness of the microscopic world, could in theory collapse calculations that would take billions of years on mundane supercomputers into a few seconds. Experimentally, though, quantum computers have been daunting. Now two groups of researchers have come up with a way to realize at least some of that potential by applying nuclear magnetic resonance—a standard technique in medical imaging and chemical analysis—to a liquid as simple as coffee (see Research Article on p. 350 ). By flipping, coupling, and reading out the spins of individual nuclei in the coffee, the strategy can turn it into a quantum logic gate and even a quantum integrated circuit.