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Quantum error correcting code discovered

Date:
October 5, 2010
Source:
Libre de Bruxelles, Université
Summary:
Researchers have demonstrated a quantum error correcting code. The work brings quantum computing a step closer.
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The journal Nature Photonics recently published an article about the successful demonstration of a quantum error correcting code by the laboratory of Ulrik Andersen at the Technical University of Copenhagen, Denmark. This work, resulting from an international collaboration with the teams of Gerd Leuchs at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, and of Nicolas Cerf at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, offers the prospects to enable tomorrow's information technologies based on quanta.

The computers of the future, currently developed in many laboratories worldwide, will use increasingly miniaturized components. The ultimate stage of this development is expected to reply on the manipulation of quantum bits, analogous to bits -- the computer's 0 and 1's -- but at the level of atoms and photons, which are the elementary constituents of matter and light. Quantum physics prevails at the microscopic scale, so that quantum computers, which would exploit information quanta at this scale, are some of the most awaited applications of this new information technology.

The article by Mikael Lassen and collaborators reports on an important future component for quantum information technology, namely a quantum error correcting code.

We actually use error correcting codes every day without knowing it ! CDs and DVDs use this technique to enable a reading that is relatively insensitive to small imperfections on the disk surface such as scratches, smudges or dust.

The Danish team and its Belgian and German colleagues have implemented an error correcting code that provides resistance to errors in the handling, transmission or storage of quanta of information. Their scheme, using the transmission of photons, resists the loss thereof. Quantum information is split into several light beams and can be recovered even if photons of these beams have been lost.

Such an insensitivity is remarkable as information quanta are deemed extremely fragile: the loss of one or a few photons, almost imperceptible particles of light constituting a beam, is an often inevitable process.

This experiment is one of the first demonstration of error correction achieved at the scale of quanta and should help paving the way to computers of the future.


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Materials provided by Libre de Bruxelles, Université. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Mikael Lassen, Metin Sabuncu, Alexander Huck, Julien Niset, Gerd Leuchs, Nicolas J. Cerf, Ulrik L. Andersen. Quantum optical coherence can survive photon losses using a continuous-variable quantum erasure-correcting code. Nature Photonics, 2010; 4 (10): 700 DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2010.168

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Libre de Bruxelles, Université. "Quantum error correcting code discovered." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 October 2010. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101004101638.htm>.
Libre de Bruxelles, Université. (2010, October 5). Quantum error correcting code discovered. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 29, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101004101638.htm
Libre de Bruxelles, Université. "Quantum error correcting code discovered." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101004101638.htm (accessed March 29, 2024).

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