Quantum trap

Physicists at the

(NIST) have designed and built an electromagnetic trap for ions that could be mass produced to potentially make quantum computers large enough for practical use.

The new trap may help scientists surmount what is currently the most significant barrier to building a working quantum computer, namely scaling up components and processes that have been successfully demonstrated individually.

Quantum computers would exploit the unusual behavior of the smallest particles of matter and light. Their theoretical ability to perform vast numbers of operations simultaneously has the potential to solve certain problems, such as breaking data encryption codes or searching large databases, far faster than conventional computers.

Ions are promising candidates for use as quantum bits (qubits) in quantum computers. The NIST team, one of 18 research groups worldwide experimenting with ion qubits, previously demonstrated at a rudimentary level all the basic building blocks for a quantum computer, including key processes such as error correction, and also proposed a large-scale architecture.