Physicists at ETH Zurich Demo Longest Microwave Quantum Link
(ETHZ.en) Physicists at ETH Zurich have demonstrated a five-metre-long microwave quantum link, the longest of its kind to date. It can be used both for future quantum computer networks and for experiments in basic quantum physics research.
To build powerful quantum computers in the future, it will be necessary to connect several smaller computers to form a kind of cluster or local network (LAN). The longest such link to date based on microwaves, at five metres long, was recently built in the laboratory of Andreas Wallraff, professor at the Quantum Device Lab at ETH Zurich. Click here for the virtual presentation.
“That’s really a milestone for us”, Wallraff explains, “since now we can show that quantum-LANs are possible in principle. In the next 10 to 20 years, quantum computers will probably increasingly rely on them.”
“So, this is definitely not a “table-top” experiment anymore that one can put together on a small workbench”, Wallraff says. “A lot of development work has gone into this, and ETH is an ideal place for building such an ambitious apparatus. It’s a kind of mini-CERN that we first had to build over several years in order to be able to do interesting things with it now.” Apart from the three PhD students who carried out the experiments, several engineers and technicians, also in the workshops at ETH and at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), were involved in producing and constructing the quantum link.
