Qubit Link Could Pave The Way For World's Most Powerful Computers

Professor Richard Winpenny, of the School of Chemistryand a team of international researchers, have discovered a new methodwhich could hold the key to creating the first practical quantumcomputers.

If built, quantum computers would be the most powerfulcomputers ever made, with speeds millions of times faster than theaverage PC for some calculations. These speeds would be valuable infactoring large numbers, and therefore extremely useful for encryptinginformation.

Professor Richard Winpenny and the research teamhave for the first time demonstrated how qubit rings, pieces of quantuminformation, can be linked together.

The breakthrough, whichresults from three years research, opens up the possibility of beingable to create quantum gates - a more advanced version of processorsfound in modern computers.

Professor Winpenny, said: "Linkingthese molecules not only gives us a much better understanding of howthese molecules interact but it also gives us more control over howthey interact, which is essential if we are to ever successfullyimplement quantum gates.

"This is the start rather than thefinish in terms of the development of a quantum computer, but now thatwe have shown we can do this, it gives us clear targets."

Thefull results of the research will be published in issue 40 of theChemistry Journal Angewandte Chemie. The Paper is entitled: "LinkingRings through Diamines and Clusters: Exploring Synthetic Methods forMaking Magnetic Quantum Gates."

The research, which was funded bythe Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), theRoyal Society and the European Commission, was carried out incollaboration with The Italian National Institute for the Physics ofMatter (Modena) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique(Grenoble). Key to the collaboration is a European funded Network ofExcellence MagmaNet - which has recently been founded to underpinresearch in molecular magnetism.