Scientists Strengthen Quantum Building Blocks in Milestone Critical for Scale-Up

(Phys.org) A group of international scientists have substantially lengthened the duration of time that a spin-orbit qubit in silicon can retain quantum information for, opening up a new pathway to make silicon quantum computers more scalable and functional.
“We turned the conventional wisdom on its head by demonstrating exceptionally long coherence times – ~10 milliseconds—and therefore, that spin-orbit qubits can be remarkably robust,” says UNSW Professor Sven Rogge, Chief Investigator, Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T), who led the research team.
For a quantum computer to outperform a classical computer, a large number of qubits need to work together to perform complex calculations.
“The stability of our spin-orbit qubit to electric fields is unique, proving a robust new pathway to make scalable quantum computers.” Says co-author Joe Salfi, who performed the research at CQC2T and is now at the University of British Columbia.
The finding ultimately enables new ways of manipulating individual qubits and coupling qubits over much larger distances, which will make the chip fabrication process more flexible.