(UPI.Science) Physicists in Europe have managed send light through a two-dimensional crystal layer, a breakthrough that provides a semiconducting platform for quantum computing.
One of the problems with quantum computing is that researchers haven’t been able to develop a practical and effective platform for moving photons around.
Now, scientists have new a platform. In a series of lab tests, researchers in Germany, Russia and France successfully propagated light through two-dimensional crystals. For the tests, researchers used a one-atom-thick layer of molybdenum diselenide, MoSe2 — the world’s thinnest crystal semiconductor.
“I foresee that in the near future, two-dimensional monoatomic crystals will be used to transfer information in quantum devices,” Alexey Kavokin, professor at St. Petersburg University in Russia, said in a news release. “What classic computers and supercomputers take a very long time to do, a quantum computing device will do very quickly.”