
Team closes in on “holy grail” of room temperature quantum computing chips - bookofjoe
https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/abstract.cfm?uri=optica-6-9-1244
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anba
Reading the first part of the sentence got me hopes up that something
resembling a perfect room temperature for a shared office actually exists

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colordrops
Why is this the "holy grail"? Seems that room temperature quantum chips are
not nearly as much of a big deal as, say, room temperature superconductors.
You could keep a quantum chip in a special environment since they don't have
to move around or span large areas.

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winstonschmidt
Have you seen the machinery needed to cool down IBM's tiny qubit chip at the
bottom? [1] It would be nice if you could just stick these things into your PC
over PCIe some day.

[1]
[https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4403/23518086798_3d3af8313e.jp...](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4403/23518086798_3d3af8313e.jpg)

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core-questions
Most of what you see in that picture is commercially-available, commodity
scientific-grade cryogenics gear. There are a handful of suppliers that make
this kind of gear and it's probably pretty common across all of the
superconducting QC research machines.

So yeah, it's crazy machinery, but it's not anything special to IBM. Hopefully
there's pressure to miniaturize it, but ultimately do you want to have to
worry about getting a Helium 3 delivery to be able to use your laptop?

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mustacheemperor
>ultimately do you want to have to worry about getting a Helium 3 delivery to
be able to use your laptop?

Hence why a room temperature quantum computing chip is a "holy grail"?

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igravious
With all due respect I think the title of the article “Ultra-efficient
frequency conversion in quasi-phase-matched lithium niobate microrings” is
better than the editorialised title given here.

Maybe let us debate whether or not the presented research does what the poster
claims it does.

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bookofjoe
It's not the poster who makes the claim: "Team closes in on 'holy grail' of
room temperature quantum computing chips" [https://phys.org/news/2019-09-team-
holy-grail-room-temperatu...](https://phys.org/news/2019-09-team-holy-grail-
room-temperature.html)

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comnetxr
Any evidence that these are quantum coherent devices? In seems like the only
reference in the paper is that "future improvements" will allow entanglement
generation. I don't think the use of "closes in" in the HN title would be
appropriate if these are such early stage devices that they can't even put a
number on the coherence time yet.

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comnetxr
It may be that the use of photons gives long coherence in these devices as
compared to other types of potential qubits, but then you still have to ask
about (coherence time) / (gate time).

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tombert
Damnit, now I have to learn Q#...I've been putting it off for more than a year
but I guess I need to stay competitive.

Well, actually, maybe this would be the right audience to ask; if I wanted to
do some stuff with quantum, would you recommend Q# or is there a cooler
language to use now?

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jackfoxy
I do know the MS guy largely responsible for Q#. He's an honest fellow and
adamant that there is nothing like it. I've never worked with it. If you do
get serious with it I'm sure the team would be very interested in hearing from
you.

AFAIK the only "quantum computer" it currently interfaces with is LIQ𝑈𝑖⏐〉 (a
simulator).
[http://stationq.github.io/Liquid/](http://stationq.github.io/Liquid/)

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nategri
That stylization is _very_ exhausting (yes, I know what a "ket" is)

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tombert
TIL that the right angle bracket is called a 'ket', and the left part is
called a 'bra'. The 14-year-old inside of me is now looking to use the word
'bra' with impunity more often.

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deepnotderp
Tldr: It's a low loss nonlinear optical component, reducing the loss by a
factor of 2.

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cheez
Now explain like I'm five :)

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lisper
They're trying to make a computer that computes using light that bounces
around inside the computer. The more the light bounces around, the dimmer it
gets, and the less effective it becomes at computing things. They figured out
a way to make the light bounce around twice as long (and so be able to compute
more stuff) before it gets too dim to work any more.

("Dim" isn't quite the right word, but you did say five.)

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cheez
What did that have to do with temperature?

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lisper
Light does quantum-y things at room temperature. Other quantum systems have to
be very cold before they do quantum-y things.

