"""It's hard to understand, almost, that you can have this quantum thing that's a millimetre thick that you can hold in your hand," said Ben Sussman, a quantum physicist at the National Research Council of Canada and an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, who co-authored the study published online Thursday in Science.
Sussman, who largely designed and set up the experiments, said the demonstration is important in part because scientists and engineers around the world have been working hard to exploit quantum phenomena such as entanglement for use in new technologies such as quantum computing. In the future, quantum computers are expected to be able to store exponentially more information and process information exponentially faster than conventional computers.
The challenge is that many approaches to building quantum computing-technologies being tested now require unusual materials and conditions, such as very cold temperatures. What sets the new study apart is it took place at room temperature in a solid-state material.""
Sussman, who largely designed and set up the experiments, said the demonstration is important in part because scientists and engineers around the world have been working hard to exploit quantum phenomena such as entanglement for use in new technologies such as quantum computing. In the future, quantum computers are expected to be able to store exponentially more information and process information exponentially faster than conventional computers.
The challenge is that many approaches to building quantum computing-technologies being tested now require unusual materials and conditions, such as very cold temperatures. What sets the new study apart is it took place at room temperature in a solid-state material.""
""Those conditions are "sort of the holy grails" for building practical quantum devices that are compact, robust and don't need special environmental controls, Sussman said.
"I think it does open a door," said Ian Walmsley, a professor of experimental physics at the University of Oxford who co-authored the paper and runs the lab where the experiments took place.
However, he and Sussman both acknowledge that the system still has issues to overcome before it can lead to commercial applications.
Walmsley said although entanglement has mostly been seen in very, very small things, it was previously known to be theoretically possible in regular-sized objects.
"We don't think there is a fundamental surprise here," he said.
However, entanglement of large-scale objects was difficult to demonstrate experimentally, and any larger systems that showed entanglement in the past were unusual, such as superconducting circuits cooled to very low temperatures.""
"I think it does open a door," said Ian Walmsley, a professor of experimental physics at the University of Oxford who co-authored the paper and runs the lab where the experiments took place.
However, he and Sussman both acknowledge that the system still has issues to overcome before it can lead to commercial applications.
Walmsley said although entanglement has mostly been seen in very, very small things, it was previously known to be theoretically possible in regular-sized objects.
"We don't think there is a fundamental surprise here," he said.
However, entanglement of large-scale objects was difficult to demonstrate experimentally, and any larger systems that showed entanglement in the past were unusual, such as superconducting circuits cooled to very low temperatures.""
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/12/01/science-diamond-quantum-entanglement.html
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